The Healthiest Donut (Kopie)

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Posted on November 10, 2011 | 5 Comments

This was the first time I ever made donuts. I tried some sweet potato donuts a few months ago at a vegetarian food festival. I was disappointed in them. I loved the idea of sweet potato donuts, but those ones were overpriced, and didn’t actually taste like sweet potato.

Recently, I got the urge to try to make some myself. I knew I could beat the ones I tried at that festival. Mine were going to taste like sweet potato, not just have a pale orange hue! I actually I made donuts twice while on this mission, and I’m going to share both recipes. The first batch allowed me to just get a feel for donut making. In the second batch, I perfected the healthified donut. I looked at an an awful lot of recipes that required frying. And I have to confess, the first recipe I developed, I fried. I figure, when you’ve never made something before, it’s good to try a more traditional approach. I used our new dutch oven, thinking I could get away using less oil (I did), because the moisture would circulate inside. These were good. I used olive oil, and only poured less than a centimeter. Here they are:

Ingredients:
1/5 cups sweet potato puree
1/2 cup spelt flour
extra flour for your hands
1/4 cup flax seeds (ground)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp cinnamon
cane sugar for sprinkling/rolling

How to:
1.preheat oven to 350, preheat dutch oven as well

2.mix together everything except for sugar
3.on a floured surface, and with floured hands, shape dough into 6 bun shapes
4.poke a hole in the middle of each ball (I used a floured wooden spoon)
5.fry for 7 minutes, flipping halfway
6.transfer to paper towel to drain excess oil
7.transfer to oven (I put them on a pizza stone, but you can use a cookie sheet), and bake for 10-15 minutes)
8.roll in a small amount of cane sugar (2 tsp or less per donut)
9.enjoy!

So, I did enjoy these. And I made them on a cheat day. They were good, but not good enough for me. Not good enough for a healthy food blog. There was a little guilt in the sugar. I don’t usually bake with sugar, as organic an unprocessed as it was. I want to create desserts that are so healthy you could eat them for breakfast…so then, a few days later, I did! There is absolutely nothing questionable about this next donut. No frying. No sugar. Just amazingly healthy ingredients. And you know what? It’s more enjoyable, for all those reasons, and I think it just plain tastes better too.

Healthiest Donuts Ingredients:
2 cups sweet potato puree
2 eggs
1 cup oat bran
1/2 cup ground flax seed
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp molasses
1 tbsp baking powder

Healthiest Icing ingredients:
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
?1 tbsp cinnamon
?1/8 cup water
?1/3 cup raw slivered almonds

Healthiest Donuts How to:
1.blend all donut ingredients in the food processor
2.transfer to bowl and refrigerate for 30 mins or more (this will make the dough less sticky to handle)
3.preheat oven to 350
4.with floured hands, shape into 8 bun shapes
5.with a floured back of a spoon, make holes
6.bake for 16-18 minutes
7.transfer to a wire cooling rack
While they cool off, make the icing

8.in a bowl, mix together protein powder and cinnamon
9.slowly stir in water (you may want to use less, if you’d like a thicker icing
10.when donuts are cool, spread icing over them
11.sprinkle with almonds
12.store in the fridge, so the icing can set (and keep in the fridge after, as these are made of super-fresh ingredients, and are not your leave-on-the-counter type of baked goods!
13.Enjoy!

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