Gluten free and vegan chocolate donuts that are yummy, fluffy, and baked! Simply sweet and made in only one bowl, you can have a healthy treat in no time.
Donuts are delicious, I think we can all agree on that!
These gluten free and vegan chocolate donuts are perfectly sweet thanks to only a little sugar, not dry at all, and warm and comforting thanks to cinnamon that brings out the chocolate flavor!
But best of all is how dang easy these donuts are to make! If you have an hour, you have more than enough time to make these for breakfast, brunch, or just because.
Free From: wheat, gluten, dairy, casein, eggs, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, coconut, fish, shellfish, crustaceans, mollusks, celery, corn, sesame, mustard, lupin, sulfites, and more
Making a Gluten Free and Vegan Chocolate Donut
You will need a donut pan. I purchased mine years ago from Home Goods and it’s a 12 donut metal pan. If you are using a metal pan, you’ll want to lightly oil it so none of the donuts stick. While you can use cooking spray, I recommend that you use plain canola or vegetable oil on a paper towel to grease your pans. Cooking spray isn’t always gluten free, not to mention it gets everywhere.
There are silicone donut pans out there, in which you won’t need to oil at all, just make sure you place it on a metal baking sheet so that it doesn’t flop all over your oven.
To get the dough into the pan easily, pop the dough into a piping bag and simply squeeze into the little circles! Much easier than trying to wrestle with spoons and drips everywhere. Not to say that I’m a perfect baker, I still got a few drips on the pan. But the piping bag trick made my life SO MUCH easier to get these into the pan.
After baking, transfer the donuts to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.
Donut Toppings
For frosting, I made a simple ganache of milk and melted chocolate. Using whole milk or even cream is perfect in this recipe. If you are vegan or have a dairy allergy, no worries. Soy, oat, almond, or coconut cream all work well. Avoid using rice milk as it is too watery and can cause the chocolate to seize up.
I had 3 types of donuts: Plain, sprinkled, and salted. The surprise hit in my family were the sea salt ones! The juxtaposition of the sweet donut with the flakey sea salt was just dang good.
All in all, I think these donuts make the perfect lazy weekend morning breakfast, or a simple and decadent dessert after dinner.
Want more donut recipes? Check these out!
S'mores Donuts (gluten free, vegan, top 14 free)
Hot Chocolate Cupcakes (gluten free, vegan, top 14 free)
Recipe
Ingredients
Donuts
- 1 ½ cup all purpose gluten-free flour
- ¼ cup cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ teaspoon cinnamon (optional but highly recommended!)
- 2 Flax Eggs (2 tablespoon of ground flax mixed with 5 tablespoon of hot water)
- 1 cup milk of your choice
- ½ teaspoon lemon juice OR apple cider vinegar
- ½ cup sugar
- ⅓ cup applesauce
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
Chocolate Glaze
- ½ cup chocolate, chopped
- 1-2 tablespoon warm milk
Instructions
- Pre-heat your oven to 350°F / 177°C. Lightly grease your donut pan if using a metal, leave alone if using silicone.
- Make your flax eggs. In a small bowl add your flax seeds and hot (almost boiling) water. Stir well and set aside for 5 minutes to allow it to gel.
- Add your lemon juice or apple cider vinegar to your milk. Set aside for 3 minutes to let it turn to buttermilk.
- In a medium size mixing bowl, add the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stir well to thuroughly mix. Make a well in the middle of your dry ingredients and slowly add your flax eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, applesauce, and vanilla.
- Gently mix to combine. No need to worry about over mixing because there is no gluten!
- Transfer your dough to a piping bag before filling your donut molds up ¾ of the way full.
- Bake your donuts for between 25 and 30 minutes. You want a toothpick inserted to come out clean. The donuts should pull away from the sides of the pan. For a slightly chewier donut, remove from the oven closer to 25 minutes. For a more cake-like donut, remove from the oven closer to 30 minutes.
- After removing the donuts, let rest for 3 minutes in the pan before removing them from the hot pan and onto a cooling rack. Let cool completely before frosting.
- While the donuts are cooling, make the glaze. In the microwave, warm up your milk until it reaches a temperature of about 120°F / 49°C. Pour over the chocolate and let sit for one minute. This begins to melt the chocolate. Now, stir the chocolate until all melted. You might need to pop it back in the microwave to keep it warm. If too thick, add more milk, if too thin, add a few more chocolate chips.
- Dip the cooled donuts in the glaze. I like to use a twisting motion with my wrist to evenly coat the donut. Kind of like opening a doorknob. Gently shake off any excess and let it rest on a cooling rack. Make sure to sprinkle while the chocolate glaze is still wet so they will stick!
- Eat! These are best when fresh but will keep in the fridge up to 3 days and in the freezer up to 3 months.
Notes
The nutritional information on this website is only an estimate and is provided for convenience and as a courtesy only. The accuracy of the nutritional information for any recipe on this site is not guaranteed.
Did you make this recipe?
Please let me know how this turned out for you! Pop over to the Facebook Page to share your success or tag me over on Instagram with the hashtag #livingbeyondallergies I love to see your creations!
Niko R. says
The taste was amazing but they were a tough as hockey pucks, not cake like at all. I followed the recipe to a "T" and they didn't rise very much, just to the top of the pan and they were almost full when I put them in the oven. What could I have done wrong? I did use 2 eggs because we don't have egg allergies.
Laura says
Thank you for this honest review! Hmm, I would say that using 2 chicken eggs might be the cause here. Chicken eggs have a lot more "oomph" and power for use as binding ingredients together as opposed to flax eggs. I would suggest just 1 egg next time. Or, you could use this gluten free chocolate cupcake recipe as the main recipe for the donuts. Just replace the butter and sour cream with your favorite dairy free equivalent. I've used vegan butter in this before and it works good. This should get you about 24 donuts. Finally, I'll be sure to add more donut recipes to here with more variations so that we can have delicious donuts that aren't hockey pucks! 🙂 Thanks again and hope this helps.