Lemon Glazed Pound Cake Donuts

I'm on a donut kick, so be prepared for lots of donuts. They are all going to be yummy, un-fried, and they won't taste like the usual dry, cake-y regular baked donuts. Those are gross.
These donuts I will be sharing with you are moist, full of flavor and are as close as you can get to a fried donut say from dunkin donuts or your local bakery without frying!

You're welcome!

Lemon Glazed Pound Cake Donuts
Yield:16 Donuts (You can easily halve this recipe, too)
Pre-heat oven to 300

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, softened
1, 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened
3 cups sugar
6 eggs
3 cups AP flour
1/8 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. vanilla

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat butter, cream cheese and sugar together on medium high for a couple minutes until very light and fluffy, scraping down the sides of the bowl frequently.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating very well after each one.
Shut off mixer, and add in flour, salt and vanilla all at once.
Mix on low just until combined.

Fill a ziploc bag with donut batter and snip off about a half inch corner.

In a greased and floured donut pan, squeeze batter so each donut compartment (?) is filled to the top, but not over the top!

Bake for 25-30 minutes, til a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Allow to cool for a few minutes before dumping out onto a cooling rack.

Allow to cool for another 10 minutes before dunking in glaze.

Lemon Glaze:
2 Cups powdered Sugar,
1/4-1/2 Cup lemon juice

Add lemon lemon juice to confectioners sugar until you have a good dipping consistency.
Dunk donuts in glaze, flipping around several times with a fork before removing back to cooking rack.

Allow glaze to harden. If desired, add more confectioners sugar to your extra glaze, and add a decorative drizzle over each of your donuts.

Enjoy- these are so so so so good and actually yummier the next day!

Donut Hole Brownies

In case you haven't noticed, I'm all about excess and overload when it comes to dessert.




Thankfully I married a man shares with my sweets overload tendencies. We are a good match. We both have the biggest sweet tooth's in the universe. There has never ever once in our marriage been a time that he ate something ridiculously sugary, and said, 'this is too sweet'.


We have the ability to polish off an entire half gallon of ice cream in one sitting, and frequently eat the desserts I make in one day. Sooometimes they last for two. But it is rare.


I love that man. Not only for this sweet tooth we share, of course. But that certainly helps.




I do try to make things a little lighter though when I cook/bake.


Like I'll use 35 calorie plain almond milk in recipes that call for cream or regular milk. Mr. husband is a 'man food' kind of guy, and he has never ever EVER noticed.


Another thing I do is replace oil with applesauce, always, except for bread. Duh.


And lately, I've been cutting the sugar in half in most desserts, and doing the other have Stevia. 


When I tell Mr. husband about that after he eats something he always tells me he had no idea...But then he thinks that since it's 'healthy', he can eat 3 times as much. But so do It. And this is why we're married.




I don't put these sneaky little tricks in the recipes though, because:
a) people will get freaked out, and never make or eat anything in my blog.
b) who keeps a big bag of stevia around, anyways? 
c) and if you're gonna have dessert, HAVE DESSERT.
d) also, sometimes it does change the texture a teensy, weensy, tiny bit....and although me and husband don't care, and it still tastes amazing, I don't want to give you a recipe that isn't what you were dreaming it would be.


So, that's my story.




These brownies though are pretty impossible to even try to healthify. I mean, they have donut holes in them...so.....
They're also pretty impossible to resist, and they are the easiest things in the universe to throw together.

Donut Hole Brownies

 Prepare a 8x8 pan by greasing very well.

Pre-heat oven to 325.

Your favorite brownie recipe. I used this recipe over at Smitten Kitchen.

A package of Glazed Donut Holes with at least 12.

Prepare brownie batter.

Spread a little less than half the batter in the bottom of the prepared pan.

Press donut holes into the batter, and pour remaining batter evenly over them.

Bake for about 25 minutes. 

Let cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then dump out onto a plate.

For the Ganache:

1 1/2 Cups Chocolate Chips (milk or semi-sweet)

3 Tbsp. Milk

In a pan, over medium/low heat, combine choc. chips and milk.

Stir constantly untl chocolate is smooth and melted.

Be careful to not over heat! I shut off the burner right before all the chips were melted, cause it keeps melting from the heat of the pan even after you take it off.

Pour ganache all over your brownies.

Let it set for 20 minutes and dig in!

Enjoy!!

Pumpkin Donuts

Weekends make me happy...

I'm not sure why though since my husband works Saturdays, and the weekend is like every other day for me since I'm a stay at home mom.

There's just something so exciting about the thought of it being Friday night and Saturday! Usually, I like to do nothing on Saturdays....Just do a little snuggle time with my munchkin, have a lot of cups of coffee, watch tv, bake some treats to have with my many cups of coffee, stay in my jammies til right before my husband gets home...that sort of thing.

Today, was the opposite of that.

I suppose you could call me supermom/person.

I did so much today, starting with a 30 minute work out video, and a 2 mile run.
Then, I did 4 loads of laundry, vacuumed my whole house, washed all the floors (moved all the furniture to clean under....yeah, I CLEANED.), gave my baby girl a bath....oh, and this was all before 10:30 am....and that's just the beginning....I wont bore you with the details of everything I did the rest of the day....

AND did I mention I didn't really sleep last night? It was a very aggravating night. I kept waking up every hour, and then at 5am, my body decided it was time to start the day. I was bright eyed and bushy tailed! 

Okay lets not push it. I was awake.

I figured out why I didn't sleep though....did I mention I got a donut pan testerday?!?!

I thought about it aaaall night, and what kind of delicious donuts I would make. Obviously pumpkin was at the top of the list. Have I ever mentioned also how much I LOVE pumpkin?

If it was a man, my husband never would have stood a chance.

So, the problem is.....now that I know how easy these babies are, and now that I know how amazingly delicious they are, I will be making them way too often. Good thing I own lots of sweatpants.

Add your wet ingredients together.

add your dry ingredients to your wet ingredients.

Mix just until combined....Don't over mix!!!

After 11 minutes of baking they came out perfect!

a little glaze action

Pumpkin Donuts

For the donuts:

1 3/4 Cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/2 brown sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 tsp.vanilla extract

3/4 cup canned pumpkin

1/2 cup milk

preheat oven to 350.

Grease your donut pan very well. I used lots of cooking spray.

Mix flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg together.

Mix oil, sugar, egg, vanilla and pumpkin together very well.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix JUST until combined. You DO NOT want to overmix.

Using either a pastry bag, or a ziploc bag with the corner cut off, fill the donut compartments almost all the way full.

Bake 11-13 minutes. Or until they spring back when you touch them.

Let sit in the pan for a minute, then flip them out onto a cooking rack.

For the Glaze:

3 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup buttermilk (or sour cream, which is what I used.)

3 or 4 tablespoons of milk, If you are using sour cream.

1/2 tsp. vanilla 

Mix glaze until very smooth.

Glaze the donuts while they are still warm. Put back on cooling rack to allow excess glaze to drip off.

Enjoy! :)