Baked Old Fashioned Chocolate Donut Holes - From Chef To Home (2024)

I’ve been wanting to make these old fashioned chocolate donut holes for quite some time now.

The old fashioned chocolate donut is by far my favorite donut. Well, my favorite right behind sour cream donuts and peanut sticks. The topic of when these donuts were going to be made almost became a weekly conversation. At the very least it was a hot topic with my oldest daughter. See, I bought the donut hole pan a few weeks ago. When it arrived from Amazon my oldest became quite interested. But week after week, for some reason or another my recipe focus diverted to another recipe. This diverted focus was the main reason for the delay.

These are quite dense and cakey, but not quite like your traditional fried cake. The baking gives the baking powder a bit more push, but that’s the tradeoff for not frying. It’s a tradeoff I am willing to make. Baking makes them just as tasty without the guilt and fat of frying.

Oh, and as you read through the recipe you will notice this recipe doesn’t use yeast. So there is no fuss over proofing or blooming yeast, which means these are a cinch to make.

Let’s Make The Donuts

First thing you will want to do is mix together the dry ingredients. This includes all purpose flour, cake flour, dark cocoa powder, sugar, salt, baking powder, nutmeg and instant espresso. The addition of the espresso powder gives the donut a deeper flavor and wakes up the tastebuds at the same time.

I mix these ingredients with a whisk to aerate the flour and quickly incorporate the ingredients.

In a separate bowl mix together the melted butter, sour cream, egg, egg yolk, vanilla and milk.

Once the dry are mixed with the dry and the wet are mixed with the wet, it’s now time to fold them together. It is important to not mix too much or you will develop gluten. More gluten means tough donuts.

Once the batter is brought together it is time to scoop it into the donut hole pan. I filled the cavities almost all the way.

Place the donut tray in a preheated 350° and bake for 14 minutes. This is a non-stick Wilton pan so I did not use pan spray. The result was a hard smooth texture to the bottom of the donut holes. The next tray I used some pan spray and the result was a softer donut. My suggestion, use pan spray. After the 14 minutes is up, remove pan(s) from oven and allow donuts to cool on a cooling rack. While the donuts cool, mix up the glaze:

The Glaze

• 3 1/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon corn syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup minus 1 Tbsp hot water

I made my glaze a bit thick because that is what I like. If you want a thinner glaze just add a bit more hot water.

Dip each cooled donut hole in the glaze. Gently scrape the excess glaze off the donut hole and lay back on cooling rack glaze side up. Allow glaze to dry.

For a variation add 1/3 cup cocoa powder and as much water as needed to loosen up glaze for a decadent chocolate glaze.

And there you have it. Old Fashioned Chocolate Donut Holes kissed with a bit of espresso.

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