These baked vegan chocolate peanut butter donuts are not too sweet, perfectly cake like, and just the right thing to dip in your morning coffee or afternoon tea.
Do you want to know a secret about my former self? I used to love donuts from Dunkin Donuts. My favorite, the old fashioned cake donuts, nothing fancy, and nothing too sweet. One or two of those with a cup of coffee and I was a happy girl. But all of that stopped when I started to pay attention to what was in my food.
Fast forward to yesterday, and my taste buds were screaming, get your donut on girl! Thanks to all of the craziness over cronuts that I just can’t seem to escape – the internet is crawling with them! Well, as fate would have it, I was struggling to pull out a baking sheet (to make kale chips) from my overly crowded cabinet, and what just happened to fall on my feet? My baked donut pan!! Can’t you just see me looking up to the sky with an irritated look on my face? Really? I was trying to squelch those cravings with something healthy, ugh, sometimes, I swear….
It’s all good though, because look what I made.
Warm, cake like, baked vegan chocolate peanut butter donuts. Oh my gosh, these hit the spot. Because I can be a stubborn biatch at times, I wasn’t going to totally submit to the powers that forced that donut pan to fall at my feet, so I made “healthy” donuts. These are made with whole grain white flour, which gives them a nutty, dense texture. These are more chewy than soft, and I like that. I also reduced the sugar that’s usually in a donut recipe and let the flavors of the peanut butter and chocolate shine. The glaze adds just the right amount of sugar to make them feel like a big indulgence.
So, why didn’t I make an old fashioned cake donut if those used to be my favorite? I knew you were wondering. Because, while I was slammed with cronuts while surfing the internet, I was also slammed with peanut butter cup recipes. Double crave inducing whammy! Take a look at Mira’s peanut butter cups from Cooking LSL. Peanut butter cups are one of my favorite candies, and who doesn’t like those two things together?
And that my friends, is how these delicious, not too sweet, perfectly dense, baked vegan chocolate peanut butter donuts came to be. They make me do a happy dance. They're easy to make, the ingredients are natural and simple, they're oil free, and they're sooooo good. I made some green tea and had one – okay fine, I had two – while I took a break from work to watch the snow fall (again). Perhaps that’s why that donut pan was handed to me? Someone wanted me to do something spontaneous, to give in to my craving, to stop being so damn rigid, and to take a breath and enjoy the beauty of the moment, and that snow, as much as I complain about it, was beautiful.
All of that, thanks to a donut. Fine, two donuts. 😉
Take a moment to enjoy life today. It’s always the simple things that mean the most if we just stop and pay attention.
This is the donut pan that I use. You can purchase it just by clicking this picture!
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Baked Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Donuts
Ingredients
- 1 and ¼ cups of white whole wheat flour for a softer version use all purpose flour
- ¼ cup of cacao or cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon of baking powder
- 1 teaspoon of baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon of ground sea salt
- 3 tablespoons of natural peanut butter
- ½ cup of sugar
- ¼ cup of apple sauce + 1 teaspoon of baking powder mixed together this is your egg replacer
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla
- 1 cup of almond milk
- ¼ cup of hot water
- Glaze
- ¼ cup of confectioners’ sugar
- 2 tablespoons of almond milk
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375°
- Grease and flour the pan
- In a medium bowl whisk the dry ingredients together. Set aside
- Mix the apple sauce and baking powder together in a small bowl until it foams and rises. Set aside
- In a mixing bowl mix the peanut butter and sugar on a high setting until the peanut butter is light and creamy. Add the egg replacer and whip for 1 minute. Add the vanilla and ⅓ of the dry ingredients, mix until just combined then add ⅓ of the milk, continue adding the dry mix and the milk in thirds. Stir in the hot water until the mix is thoroughly combined. Don’t over mix.
- Spoon or pipe (you can use a plastic bag, just cut a corner to pipe the mixture in) the batter into the pan. Fill ¾ of the way full. Bake for 10 minutes and then reduce the heat to 350° and bake for 10 -15 more minutes. Test with a toothpick. It should come out clean and the tops of the donuts should be slightly cracked.
- Cool for 10 minutes then remove from pan and cool on a cooling rack. Cool completely before glazing.
- Glaze
- Stir the sugar and milk together in a small, wide bowl until smooth and creamy. Dip the tops of the donuts in and place on a cooling rack until hardened.
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