With summer approaching and school almost out, you may soon find yourself hosting more parties. Whether it is a child’s birthday party, a baby shower, or anniversary, why not host a donut party to mark the occasion? It is easy and fun to do, and only requires minimal prep.
Here’s what you need to host a donut party:
Donuts
Prior to the party you only need to bake the donuts and prepare the glazes. Then have your guests decorate their donuts whichever way they want to. Donuts can be baked the morning of the party, or the night before to save some time. The donuts in this recipe only require 10 minutes of prep time and 10 minutes of baking time. If you bake them in advance, store them covered at room temperature until the party.
The donut batter recipe that I provided in this article is a classic vanilla one to allow the glazes to shine. However, if you want to make colored donuts you can use natural coloring agents such as matcha and cocoa powder, as well as freeze-dried fruit powders. I recommend freeze-dried raspberry powder for pink donuts, and freeze-dried blueberry or blackberry powder for purple donuts. For bright blue donuts, you can use blue spirulina powder.
For the recipe bellow, I used a regular 6 cavity donut pan, which yielded 12 donuts. You may opt to bake mini donuts instead, and give your guests the option to decorate and eat multiple donuts. Just keep in mind the baking time will be shorter when making mini donuts. The donuts can come out of the oven when they look golden brown. You can insert a toothpick into one of them and if it comes out clean, the donuts are fully baked.
Glazes
When it comes to glazes, you can make any kind of glaze you want. You can use any of the sugar glazes I have previously made. You just need icing sugar as the base. To flavor and color the glaze, you can use fruit juice, purée, tea/ coffee or freeze-dried fruit powder (and a bit of water to dissolve the glaze).
Read more donut and glaze recipes here.
For thicker glazes I suggest melted chocolate. You can use milk and dark chocolate. Additionally you can buy some butterscotch or peanut butter chips and melt those too. For making flavored chocolates, I recommend you melt a larger amount of white chocolate at once. Then divide it between different bowls, add different flavors to each one and mix well. You can use matcha, freeze-dried fruit powder or instant coffee.
For mixing the glazes I recommend buying a few tiny whisks.
Toppings
For toppings you can buy multiple kinds of chocolate chips, sprinkles, googly eye candy, wafer cookies, and more. I recommend buying small quantities of multiple items in bulk. That way you can have a large variety of toppings and really allow the guests to get creative.
Setting up the Donut Party
Place the donuts, glazes and toppings in the middle of the table. Provide each guest with a plate, as well as toothpicks if they wish to use multiple glazes and swirl them together. Have lots of tissues handy since donut decoration can get pretty messy. You may also consider buying a single-use tablecloth for the occasion.
And finally, here’s the recipe for the donuts:
How to Host a Donut Party, Donut Recipe
Ingredients
For the donuts:
- 2 large eggs at room temperature
- 1 cup (150 g/ 5 ¼ oz.) all-purpose flour
- ½ cup (100 g/ 3 ½ oz.) granulated sugar
- ½ stick (60 g/ 2 oz.) unsalted butter at room temperature
- ½ cup (120 ml/ 4 ¼ oz.)cream (35% fat content)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 tbsp. unsalted butter at room temperature for greasing the pan
For the glazes:
- 100 g (3 ½ oz.) milk/ dark chocolate
- 100 g (3 ½ oz.) white chocolate
- 1 cup (120 g/ 4 ¼ oz.) icing sugar
- 1 tsp matcha powder
- 1 tsp freeze-dried raspberry powder
- culinary lavender
- chocolate chips
- sprinkles
- googly eye candy
Instructions
For the donuts:
- Pre-heat oven to 180 °C (350 °F).
- In a bowl sift the flour, then add the baking powder. Mix them with a whisk and set aside.
- Gently melt the butter over low temperature. Make sure the butter does not bubble. Once melted, set it aside and allow it to cool a little.
- Crack the eggs into another bowl, add the sugar and beat at high speed with an electric mixer. The mixture is ready when almost triple in volume and light in color. Add the vanilla extract, salt, cream and whisk until incorporated.
- Using a spatula, add the flour mix to the egg mix in 2-3 steps, mixing gently after each step. Make sure the flour is well incorporated, but do not over mix. Once the flour has been incorporated, fold in the melted cooled butter. Allow the batter to sit for 5 minutes.
- Grease the donut pan with butter. Pipe the batter into the pan filling each cavity ¾ and bake for 10 minutes, or until donuts spring back when gently pressed. Once baked, take the pan out of the oven and allow the donuts to cool in the donut pan for 2-3 minutes at room temperature. Transfer them to a rack and let them sit until completely cooled.
