Vegan Donuts - Homemade Recipe

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Vegan donuts are so easy to make with simple ingredients and they are as delicious as regular donuts.

Our vegan donuts are real yeast donuts, and you can either deep-fry them or bake them in the oven.

Jump to:

• What are vegan donuts?
• Ingredients & Substitutions
• How to make vegan donuts?
• Oven-baked vegan donuts
• Deep-fried vegan donuts
• Variations
• Storage
• Recipe

What are vegan donuts?

There are generally two types of donuts: yeast donuts and cake donuts.

In this blog post, we show you how to make yeast donuts. They are soft, delicious, and even vegan.

And while you'll have to wait some time for the dough to proof, this recipe is actually really easy, made with very simple ingredients, and you can either deep-fry or oven-bake the donuts.

Ingredients & Substitutions

• Flour: we use all-purpose flour to make our vegan donuts.
  
• Plant milk: you can use soy milk, oat milk, almond milk, or any other milk.
  
• Sugar: white or brown sugar will work.
  
• Oil: we use sunflower seed oil to replace butter in this dough. It works really well. You can replace sunflower seed oil with any other neutral vegetable oil.
  
• Instant dry yeast: that's necessary to proof the dough. You can replace it with fresh yeast, but you'll need 3x more fresh yeast than instant dry yeast.
  
• Aromas: we like to add orange or lemon zest, grated, in our dough. We also like to add vanilla extract. Those are optional but recommended.
  
• If you decide to deep-fry the donuts, you'll also need frying oil.

How to make vegan donuts?

Start with the donut dough

Warm-up 1 cup or 250 grams of plant milk of your choice to lukewarm temperature, then add in the instant dry yeast, give it a stir and set aside.

To a large bowl add the grated zest of 1 lemon, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract or the seeds of a real vanilla pod, the milk with the yeast, ½ cup or 100 grams of sugar, ¼ cup or 50 grams of sunflower seed oil, or another neutral flavor vegetable oil, and whisk to combine. 

Now add 3⅓ cups or 500 grams of all-purpose flour, and a pinch of salt. Mix with a spatula till the ingredients come together, then transfer the mixture to a lightly floured worktop, sprinkle with flour, and knead with your hands for about 5 minutes. 

If you prefer you can use a stand mixer to make the dough adding the ingredients in the same order.

Try to add as little flour as possible while kneading the dough. The dough should not stick to your hands, but it should still be soft and moist.

Now shape it into a ball, and transfer it to a lightly oiled bowl. Cut a cross on top, cover with a plate, and put it to proof in a warm place for about 2 hours or until it doubles in size.

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To help the dough proof, I like to put it in a slightly warm oven. Turn it on for just a minute and then turn it off: the gentle heat will help the dough to proof quickly.

Alternatively, you can proof the dough overnight in the refrigerator. It can stay in the fridge for up to 20 hours. 

Shape the dough

Once proved, transfer the dough onto a worktop without adding any flour. Lightly stretch it with your hands, then fold it twice to give it structure.

Then with the help of a rolling pin roll out the dough down to a thickness of around half an inch or 1 cm.

Cut the dough in discs with a 3 inch or 8 cm pastry cutter. Then make a hole in the center of the discs with a smaller one. 

Use one that is 1 inch or 2.5 cm to make American Donuts or one that is 1.6 inches or 4cm to make Italian Ciambelle. Italian donuts have a slightly larger hole than American ones.

Transfer the donuts onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper, then if you want you can do the same for the donut holes, which btw are delicious too.

Put the leftover dough scraps back together, flatten them and get more donuts out of them, until you run out of dough. You should get at least 12 donuts, and 12 donut holes.

Oven-baked vegan donuts

Let the dough prove a second time for 30 minutes in a warm place, then brush the donuts with plant milk and bake them, one tray at a time, in a preheated oven at 350F or 180C for about 10 to 12 minutes, till lightly golden on top. Bake them in the middle-lower rack of your oven.

You can certainly eat the donuts like this, they are incredibly soft and delicious and you won’t believe they are vegan.

You can also lightly dust them with powdered sugar, or dip them in plant milk and coat them with sugar.

Deep-fried vegan donuts

For the deep-fried version, make sure the oil temperature is at 340°F or 170°C and fry 2 to 3 donuts at the time for about 1 to 1 and a half minutes per donut, and gently turn them around halfway through.

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When you take them out, let the oil drip, then transfer them onto a cooling rack lined with kitchen paper. 

Then while the donuts are still warm you can dip them in sugar, or cinnamon sugar, dust them with powdered sugar or glaze them with sugar glaze or melted chocolate.

I mean LOOK at these. They are absolutely beautiful, golden on the outside, and incredibly soft on the inside. 

Variations

1. Wholegrain Donuts

Our favorite variation is to make these vegan Italian donuts wholegrain, by adding wholewheat flour and unrefined sugar.

How to make wholegrain donuts?

For wholegrain donuts you can use the same measurements and procedure but:

• Replace all-purpose flour with 50% wholewheat flour and 50% bread flour.
• Replace the sugar with unrefined cane sugar.

If you make wholegrain donuts we recommend using the melted chocolate topping.

• Replace the cinnamon in the dough with grated orange zest.
• Replace the cinnamon sugar topping with melted dark chocolate topping (+ candied orange peel, if you have it).

Melted chocolate topping

• With a knife, chop up the dark chocolate. You can also use chocolate chips if you prefer.
• Melt the chocolate bain-marie.
  Bain-marie: in a pot, add boiling water. Then take a bowl that fits in the pot, and place it on top of the hot water (the pot should be off the heat). The bottom of the bowl should be touching the hot water in the pot. Put the chocolate in the bowl and stir it with a spatula until the heat of the water completely melts the chocolate.
• Dip the top of the donuts in the chocolate. Place on a cooling rack and add a piece of candied orange zest on top.

2. Donut holes

You can actually bake or deep fry the cut-out donut hole, making delicious little balls of donuts that are bite-size and irresistible.

If you like you can fill the donut holes with vegan custard or with chocolate-hazelnut spread.

Storage

Deep-fried donuts don't store well, and they are best eaten within 24 hours.

Store oven-baked donuts in a plastic bag for up to 3 to 4 days.

Recipe

If you liked this recipe, you might also like:

• Castagnole - Sweet dough balls
• Chiacchiere - Italian carnival sweets
• Vegan apple fritters

Did you try this recipe at home? Let us know in the comments below.

Buon appetito!

Chef Nico