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We drove out past the orchards last Saturday and the parking lots were already full at nine in the morning. Everybody in the north suburbs has the same idea in late September. Danny waited in the car with Lochlan asleep in his seat while I went in for a half gallon of cider, and I came back out with the cider and a paper bag of donuts that were gone before we hit Route 53. Six dollars for four of them. That was the afternoon I decided I was going to figure out baked apple cider donuts at home, because I am not deep frying anything in a farmhouse kitchen with a toddler who has recently learned how to open the oven.
These took me a few tries. The first batch tasted like a plain cake donut with cinnamon on it, which is the problem with almost every recipe I tried before I sorted out what was actually going wrong. The fix is not a secret ingredient. It is one extra step that takes twenty minutes and does nothing but sit on the stove.
Why baked instead of fried
I want to be honest about this, because a lot of baked donut recipes oversell themselves. A baked apple cider donut is not identical to the fried ones you get at the orchard. Fried donuts have that crisp shell and the slightly greasy edges that make them taste like a hayride. Baked ones are softer. They are closer to a very good muffin that happens to be shaped like a donut.
What you get in exchange is that you can make two dozen of them in the time it takes to preheat a pot of oil, your kitchen does not smell like a fryer for three days, and you can hand one to a nineteen month old without thinking about it. I have an autoimmune disease and there are weeks where standing over hot oil managing temperature is just not a thing I have in me. Sliding a pan into the oven and sitting down for ten minutes is.
Also, and this matters more than people admit, you can make these at seven in the morning. I have made them while Lochlan was still asleep and had them cooling by the time he came downstairs.
The step you cannot skip
Here it is. You have to boil the cider down before it goes in the batter.
Apple cider is mostly water. If you pour a cup of it into a bowl of flour, you have added a cup of water and a little bit of apple flavor, and then you bake it and the apple flavor disappears entirely. That is why so many of these recipes come out tasting like nothing.
Put one and a half cups of cider in a small saucepan over medium low heat and let it go until you have about half a cup left. It takes fifteen to twenty minutes. It goes from thin and pale to dark and a little syrupy, and it smells like the inside of the orchard store. Then let it cool for at least ten minutes before it touches the egg, or you will scramble it.
If you make homemade apple cider in the slow cooker the way I do, use that. It is already more concentrated than store bought and the flavor is better. Fresh pressed cider from the orchard is the next best thing. Do not use apple juice from the shelf. I tried it in batch three and it came out flat and weirdly sweet.
What you need
Nothing unusual except the pan. A standard donut pan makes six at a time, so I own two and bake them both at once. If you do not have one and do not want one, this batter makes very good muffins. Fill the cups two thirds full and bake for sixteen to eighteen minutes instead.
For the donuts:
- 1½ cups apple cider, reduced to ½ cup
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1½ teaspoons cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon allspice
- ½ cup packed brown sugar
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- ¼ cup butter, melted
- ¼ cup buttermilk or whole milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
For the cinnamon sugar:
- 6 tablespoons butter, melted
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 1½ teaspoons cinnamon
How I make them
Start the cider first and let it reduce while you do everything else. Cool it on the counter.
Heat the oven to 350 and butter the donut pans well, including the center posts. These stick if you rush this part. I use a pastry brush and actual butter, not spray.
Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices in one bowl. In another bowl whisk both sugars with the egg, then the melted butter, the buttermilk, the vanilla, and the cooled cider. Pour the wet into the dry and stir until it just comes together. It should look thick and a little lumpy. If you beat it smooth the donuts come out tough, which I learned the hard way on batch two.
Get the batter into the pan. A piped bag is neat and a spoon is not, and I have given up pretending I pipe it. I use a spoon and push it around with my finger and nobody has ever complained.
Bake 10 to 12 minutes. They are done when the tops spring back. Let them sit in the pan for two minutes, no longer, then turn them out onto a rack.
Now the part that makes them taste like the orchard. While they are still warm, brush each one all over with melted butter and roll it in the cinnamon sugar. Warm is important. Cold donuts will not hold the coating and you will end up with sugar in the bottom of the bowl and sad bare donuts on the rack.
🛒 A few things I use for this
- A six cavity nonstick donut pan (I have two and bake both at once)
- A wire cooling rack that fits inside a half sheet pan
- A silicone pastry brush for the butter, on the pan and on the donuts
- Good ground cinnamon, because you are using almost two tablespoons of it here
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What went wrong the first three times
I am including this because I would have wanted it.
They tasted like plain cake donuts. The cider was not reduced. This is almost always the answer.
They were tough and a little rubbery. I mixed the batter too long. Stir until the flour disappears and then stop, even if it looks uneven.
Half of them tore coming out of the pan. Two problems. I did not butter the center post, and I left them in the pan too long to cool. Two minutes and out.
The sugar would not stick. I waited too long. Have the butter melted and the cinnamon sugar in a shallow bowl before the donuts come out of the oven, and work fast.
Keeping them, and what to do with the rest of the cider
These are best the day you make them. By day two they are still good with coffee but the coating softens and they lose the edge. If you have more than you can eat, freeze them uncoated in a bag, then warm them in a 300 degree oven for a few minutes and butter and sugar them fresh. That works better than I expected it to.
You will have most of a half gallon of cider left, which is the real reason I end up at the orchard every weekend in October. Some of it gets warmed on the stove with a cinnamon stick. The rest usually turns into apple butter in the crockpot. And if you came home with more apples than cider, I have a no sugar applesauce that freezes all winter and a freezer apple pie filling I put up every September so there is pie in February without any work.
Questions I get about these
Can I use apple juice instead of cider? You can, and I would not. Juice is filtered and sweeter and it does not have the tannic apple flavor that survives the oven. If juice is all you have, reduce it the same way and add a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to the batter to put some of the sharpness back.
Do I really need a donut pan? No. Muffin tin, sixteen to eighteen minutes, and they are excellent. You just lose the shape.
Can I make the batter ahead? Not overnight. The baking powder starts working as soon as it is wet. You can reduce the cider up to three days ahead though and keep it in a jar in the fridge, which is what I usually do on a Friday for Saturday morning.
Can I make these dairy free? Melted coconut oil in the batter works. For the coating, dairy free butter is fine, though the sugar sticks a little less well.
Lochlan gets half of one, broken up, and wears most of it. Dewey stands under the rack the entire time hoping for a catastrophe. Delilah has no interest in any of this and sleeps on the chair by the window through the whole thing.
If you make them, do it on a morning when you are not going anywhere. That is the whole point of them.
