Baked Chocolate Peanut Butter Donuts

Baked chocolate peanut butter donuts! Sounds great, doesn’t it. I’ve been working hard to lose weight and keep the weight off. Weight loss is motivated by fear. I don’t want to get diabetes or other health problems. As much as I love sweet things, I need to keep my blood sugar level down so I don’t cross into diabetes territory.

That doesn’t mean I don’t look at candies and chocolates and goodies in the bakery. It’s having the willpower to walk away without buying that I constantly struggle with.

I like to buy the occasional donut. I don’t eat a donut every day. Maybe not even every week or month. Once I started looking online at lower fat donut options, baking them in the oven, that I decided maybe this is something I should do. I started off buying two donut pans on Amazon. I bought the full size donut pans. No mini donuts for me! (Disclosure: if you click the link, you’ll be taken to Amazon. If you make a purchase, I’ll receive a small commission for the referral.)

It comes in a handy/dandy 2-pack so I can make 12 donuts. Most recipes yield 6 donuts, but some make more. With two donut pans I’m ready!

Buttermilk

Why do a lot of donut recipes – or other recipes for that matter! – call for buttermilk?

I’ve never been a buttermilk person. My father liked it, so my mother bought it from time to time when I was younger. For all I know she used it when baking cakes. I remember adding a few spoonfuls of brown sugar to the cup of buttermilk just to drink it down. That memory is enough to walk right past it when I’m shopping the dairy section at the grocery store.

People have all kinds of buttermilk substitutes, usually adding vinegar to milk. That just sounds nasty!

And then something happened that never occurred to me. I read an article where someone had bought buttermilk powder at the Bulk Barn, which gave me the idea to write a post about whether buying from the bulk bin is always the cheaper option. I checked their website, and sure enough there it is, buttermilk powder, just like skim milk powder. That seemed like a good solution to me. I bought the buttermilk powder, tossed it in my freezer to keep, and never came across any recipes that needed buttermilk.

Typical!

Until I found a recipe for chocolate peanut butter donuts that made 24 donuts. Yikes! I don’t need quite that many donuts tempting me before they hit my freezer!  I adjusted some of the ingredients for what I have on hand.

Here it’s important to point out that if you actually have buttermilk on hand, then it’s OK to use it instead of the buttermilk powder!

I’m really curious if there would be any difference to this recipe if milk or a milk substitute was used instead of all this messing around with buttermilk.

Speaking of messing, I don’t want to mess with success. These donuts are a hit just the way my recipe reads it.

Makes a very moist donut, almost like eating devil’s food cake.

Here’s what you need to do to make baked chocolate peanut butter donuts.

1 cup flour

1/3 cup cocoa powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup brown sugar

1 egg or egg substitute, I used Bob’s Red Mill Egg Substitute

½ tablespoon buttermilk powder mixed with half cup water

¼ cup melted margarine or butter. I used I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter margarine

1 teaspoon vanilla

For the glaze:

½ cup powdered sugar

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

1 teaspoon chocolate peanut butter powder (optional)

2 tablespoons milk or milk substitute

For the drizzle:

1 heaping spoon peanut butter

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

Mix all ingredients together until smooth. (Excluding the glaze and drizzle ingredients!) It will be thick and dense with a deep, dark chocolate color.

Spray two donut pans with non-stick spray. This recipe makes 8 donuts.

Use a spoon to fill each donut cavity halfway to ¾ full. Alternately, you can use a pastry bag to pipe in the donut batter. Or scoop into a ziplock bag and snip off a corner. Personal preference. I use a spoon.

Tip: do not be tempted to overfill the donut cavities hoping to get 6 really big chocolate peanut butter donuts, thus saving washing one donut tin that only baked two donuts. The batter expands while it bakes and will spread over top the donut ring, leaving you with one weird looking donut/muffin combo.

Put in the oven for 10 minutes and check them with a toothpick. If it comes out clean, pull the pans from the oven. If batter sticks to the toothpick, set the timer for another two minutes and check them again.

While the donuts bake, mix together the ingredients for the glaze. Just a quick word on the glaze. I happen to have chocolate peanut butter powder in the house right now, so I added a teaspoon to the glaze. If you don’t have it, don’t worry about it, just carry on. (Disclosure: I’m an Amazon associate and if you click the link and make a purchase, I’ll receive a small commission for the referral. This is the brand of powdered peanut butter I have on hand. Right now Amazon has a limited edition to get a 2 pack: regular powdered peanut butter and the chocolate peanut butter powder.)

When the donuts are removed from the oven, put the pans onto a cooling rack for a minute or two, then invert and pop the donuts out to cool completely on the wire racks.

Prepare a sheet of wax paper below the cooling racks.

Once cool, dip each donut into the glaze and return to the wire rack. Allow to set for a few minutes.

Put a spoonful of peanut butter into a microwave safe cup, and heat for about 45 seconds until warm and liquid texture. I used crunchy peanut butter. Many recipes I see the bakers prefer smooth peanut butter. I like crunchy. Go with whichever one floats your boat and what you have on hand!

Use a spoon to drizzle peanut butter over each donut.

Leave them alone for a little while to set.

Then eat!

They freeze really well. So you’re not tempted to eat them all at once, put wax paper on a cookie sheet and put all the donuts on it.

As you can see from my photo, I’m freezing 7 baked chocolate peanut butter donuts. Obviously I ate one first! The old taste test. Now willpower and portion control come into play. Into the freezer with the rest! I let them freeze overnight, actually I probably left them alone for 24 hours, but that’s because I had other stuff going on. Then I put them inside a freezer bag that I’d labeled and dated and stuck them in my deep freeze.

To thaw, take one out. Yes, just one. Portion control after all! Put it on a plate and let it thaw for half an hour – if you can wait that long! It tastes just as moist as it did when it was freshly out of the oven and cooled. Yummy!

This recipe is a keeper!