Vegan Homemade Pumpkin Donuts

These vegan homemade pumpkin donuts are dusted with cinnamon, sugar, and pumpkin spice and they make the perfect breakfast treat. They use ground flax and coconut oil so you don’t have to feel too guilty about eating donuts. And your vegan friends will praise you for making a vegan pumpkin donut and including them in the delicious party. Read on to learn how to make homemade donuts of your own!

Eversince the weather has grown cooler, fall recipes have been dancing through my head. Apple Brie Paninis, Pear and Pecan Salad, and, of course, all things pumpkin. I fixed pumpkin waffles for the kids the other day. And I’m thinking now that it’s October I’m allowed to start practicing pumpkin pie recipes for Thanksgiving. Right? 🙂  Sticking with the fall pumpkin theme, today we’re sharing our pumpkin donut recipe.

A few years ago someone gifted us with a donut maker. We liked the idea because although I know donuts are traditionally deep-fried, working with all that hot oil is a little bit of a pain…literally when the oil splatters on you. And all our kids heard was “donut maker”. They were super excited because they love donuts. They don’t care how it’s made so long as it’s called a donut and it taste good. Basically, we agree with this sentiment although we do try to keep an eye on nutritional value or lack there of. So we were all excited about making homemade donuts with our new donut maker…at the risk of offending doughnut snobs. But then, as things tend to happen in busy households, our donut maker got put away in a drawer and and lay long forgotten until recently. We knew we couldn’t let it lay dormant any longer so we pulled it out and made a batch of vegan homemade pumpkin donuts with pumpkin spice, cinnamon, and sugar. Our kids gave us a disgruntled “Hey, how come we haven’t used this before!” look, but all was quickly forgiven with the arrival of warm donuts.

4 Key Decisions when Making Homemade Donuts

1. To Fry or not to Fry – I mean, I get it, fried things are good. Really good. But it’s also more work. And more importantly, I do enjoy it when blood flows freely through my arteries. So health concerns do come into play when making homemade donuts. Listen, I’m not saying you should never totally splurge — we might be making a double-fried, double-stuffed, triple chocolate oreo donuts sometime in the future — but, generally speaking, it’s nice to strike a balance. We just try to always keep an eye on our long-term health. And since we were testing out our donut maker we knew we weren’t going to fry. We also made the decision to make a vegan donut because we love coming up with recipes that also work for vegan family and friends. If you need further reasons to forego the fried, check out these 7 amazing non-fried donuts from Women’s Heath.
2. What kind of donut are you making? – This is really what it’s all about, right? Chocolate of some sort is always a safe choice, but given the fall season we really wanted to make a pumpkin donut and we also liked the addition of cinnamon and pumpkin spice. At our local farm stand they make amazing apple cider donuts so that’s something we’ll have to try soon, but this time around we decided homemade pumpkin donuts were the way to go. If you really want to step out of the box with your homemade donut flavor choices then you might want to check out these 20 Outrageous Doughnut Flavors from First We Feast.  You’ll find some interesting choices like the Cronut, the Crumberry, Pineapple Basil, and Black Licorice. Bleck! No thanks on that last one.



3. Donut vs. Doughnut — Are you calling it a donut or a doughnut? I guess the same donut snobs that roll their eyes about our donut maker are also going to roll their eyes about my use of the spelling “donut”. Doughnut is the original spelling of the word, apparently coming onto the scene in the early 1800s. The doughnut vs. donut debate cites the Oxford English Dictionary as giving Washington Irving credit with the first donut reference: “An enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks.” . That’s great, but here in AMERICA we eat donuts! Just kidding, who really cares how you spell it? We’ll invite you over for donuts or doughnuts, you’re choice! But donuts is the  shortened Americanized version (we’re either lazy or efficient) which has gained more widespread use with the success of the Dunkin’ Donuts chain. Whatever you call them, we all love them!
4. Are you going to share them with your kids? Just kidding…mostly. I will say that our kids sometimes bust us for eating desserts without them. One of them we’ll come down after their bedtime and the alarm call will sound off, “Hey, Mommy and Daddy are down here eating ice cream without us!”. The fact that we fix them dessert countless times and forego ourselves escapes them in this moment. Kids and their desserts. As grown-ups obviously we are past obsessing over desserts (yeah right!). 🙂 But if you do make or buy 1 dozen donuts (or doughnuts) I do highly recommend you share them with family or friends unless you want a belly ache!

Once the above 4 decisions are made very little stands in the way between you and homemade donuts, but if you’re still not sure how to make homemade donuts and you need some more help check out everything you need to know about making doughnuts from Food52.

If you want to start with easy homemade donuts we highly recommend giving these vegan pumpkin donuts a try.  They use flour, ground flax, pumpkin puree, coconut oil, almond milk, and a few other basic baking ingredients. Everything is pretty easy and straight forward. Once your batter is all mixed up your donut maker does all the work.  You can of course also bake donuts in the oven which we do sometimes. If you don’t want to go through the fuss of cutting the dough and making the donut holes and instead want to go with a batter technique like this one then you can just buy a donut baking pan.

Pumpkin Donuts

Print Rate

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 6 minutes

Ingredients

• 1/2 T . ground flax
• 1 1/2 T . water
• 3/4 c . flour
• 1/4 c . brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp . baking powder
• 1/4 tsp . salt
• 1/4 c . pumpkin puree
• 3 T . melted coconut oil
• 1/2 c . almond milk

For the pumpkin spice cinnamon sugar

• 1/3 c . sugar
• 1 tsp . cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp . pumpkin spice

Instructions

• Make a flax egg by combining the flax and water and let sit in a small bowl until needed.
• Mix flour, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
• Mix all pumpkin puree, almond milk, coconut oil, and flax egg in a liquid measuring cup or small bowl.
• Combine the dry and wet ingredients and stir until just combined.
• Plug in donut maker (or grease donut baking pan).
• Once the donut maker is ready, spray with oil, add about 1/4-1/3 c. batter, and close.
• Cook for 6 minutes and carefully remove with a small silicon spatula or plastic fork.
• While cooking, mix the pumpkin spice cinnamon sugar together and put in an old spice container with a sprinkling lid.
• Once donuts are out, spray with oil and sprinkle with sugar.

Nutrition

Serving: 2g

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