These Beautiful Baked Breakfast Beauties are Bursting with Blueberries and Brushed with a Boiled Blueberry Blend. Blah Blah Blah one Bowl. …Bravo! Vegan Blueberry Donuts!
I mean, I think the one-liner above pretty much says all you need to know about these vegan blueberry donuts, but I guess I’ll tell you a little more. These donuts are soft and fluffy, and come together quickly and in one-bowl. Stuff them full of fresh blueberries in the actual donuts, and then add a sweet blueberry glaze on top to double the blueberry love.
These are so quick, so easy, and make for a perfect fruity breakfast treat. Make yourself a batch to have for breakfast all week, or make a dozen to bring to a brunch gathering and impress your friends with this beautiful colored glaze!
Let’s get to Baking these Blueberry Beauties! (sorry)
How To Make Them:
If this is your first time making baked donuts, let me start by saying – they are SO. EASY. Maybe the easiest of all the baked goods. The only thing to make sure of is that you have a donut pan. I am obsessed with mine and now basically any time I eat anything I think about how to donut-ify it. We’re going to start by talking about the blueberry glaze, and then move onto the donuts themselves, since the glaze needs a little cooling time.
Starting with the glaze – throw your blueberries, sugar (see Ingredients Needed section for how to make these sugar free!), and water into a small pot or saucepan. Simmer on medium heat for about 5-7 minutes, along the way using a spatula or spoon or even a fork to break up the blueberries. This part is super fun, since most of your blueberry baking endeavors will be spent trying NOT to burst the berries!
Once there are no large chunks left, remove from the heat and use a fine mesh strainer to strain out the liquid. You should get around 3-4 tbsps’ worth. Set this aside to cool entirely while making and baking the donuts.
Donut batter time..
The donuts themselves fall into my favorite category of baking, which is – basically throw all the ingredients in a bowl, mix, put in pan, bake. Nothing fancy, nothing difficult. To be more specific, you start by mixing your gluten free (or all-purpose) flour, granulated sugar (again, see the Ingredients Needed section to learn how to make these sugar free!) , baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Then add in non-dairy milk, neutral oil, soda water*, and vanilla extract. Finally add in the blueberries, and if you want to use lemon zest for a little lemon flavor love, go for it.
*Fun secret ingredient alert! I use sparkling water or soda water in my donut recipes, and it keeps them extra light and fluffy! It just gives them a little bit of extra air while also keeping them moist. If you don’t have any on hand you can use regular filtered water, it’ll just be slightly less than perfect results, that’s all! I usually keep a few cans of carbonated water laying around just for donut emergencies.
One last note on the batter portion – the amount of blueberries. What you see in this photo was ½ cup of fresh blueberries. This is the MOST you should do, and it is a LOT. The donut is delicious and amazing, but because of the abundance of berries, it makes the donuts themselves a bit fragile. Since they burst while baking, you do run a risk of one or two of your donuts getting too many berries and struggling to stay in their full donut shape. I made a dozen for this photoshoot and 2 broke in half while coming out of the pan. So if you are concerned about this, I’d say do 1/3 cup of blueberries instead, and go heavy on the glaze or even stick some fresh berries on top to make sure you have more than enough berry flavor!
Bake ’em up!
Anyway. Once your batter is mixed, you want to get it evenly into the holes in the well-greased donut pan. Once you’ve gotten it into the pan evenly, stick it in the oven for 15 minutes, then remove and put the pan onto a cooling rack. Again because the blueberries make these fragile, I like to leave them in the pan until almost entirely cooled before popping them out, which I do by placing a cooling rack over the pan and flipping the whole thing, inverting the donuts onto the cooling rack itself.
Lastly, time to turn that berry reduction into the glaze! Take your 3-4 tbsp of blueberry liquid and add a cup of powdered sugar. I recommend adding it a little at a time so if you get to your desired glaze consistency before you use the whole cup of sugar, you can stop. Or if it’s still too liquidy, you can add some more. I find this to be the right amount to glaze the donuts smoothly, but still be firm enough to stay on top like you see here and not drip off. This amount will perfectly glaze 6 donuts and then have some leftover. And VOILA, it’s time for Vegan Blueberry Donuts!!
Storage:
Store the vegan blueberry donuts at room temperature, they will last for a couple of days.
Pro Tips & Tools:
- Make sure you are measuring your flour either by weight or using the spoon and level method. Do not scoop directly from the container, as you will wind up with too much! This is so important! If you want to buy a pre-made gluten free flour blend, make sure it’s King Arthur’s Measure for Measure Gluten Free Flour, it is BY FAR the best one for my recipes, NOT Bob’s Red Mills or any others. If you want to make a homemade blend, here is a link to the one I use.
- Make sure you measure your liquid ingredients using liquid measuring cups. This will ensure accuracy! I love this set, and the large one will also serve as a tool to help pour the batter into the donut tin holes.
- Speaking of the donut pan – get yourself this set!
Ingredients Needed:
- Flour – Make sure you are measuring your flour either by weight or using the spoon and level method. Do not scoop directly from the container, as you will wind up with too much! This is so important! If you want to buy a pre-made gluten free flour blend, make sure it’s King Arthur’s Measure for Measure Gluten Free Flour, it is BY FAR the best one for my recipes, NOT Bob’s Red Mills or any others. If you want to make a homemade blend, here is a link to the one I use.
- Granulated sugar – If you want to make these sugar free, I love using this Monkfruit Sweetener in place of granulated sugar.
- Baking powder – I recommend using baking powder that has no added aluminum. This one is my go-to.
- Salt
- Non-dairy milk – any will do, I usually use soy or almond
- Neutral oil – I always use grapeseed
- Soda water – I go into more detail on this earlier, but some sort of carbonated water helps keep these fluffy. If you don’t have any, you can use regular filtered water.
- Vanilla extract
- Blueberries
- Powdered sugar – for the glaze. If you want this part to be sugar free, you can use this Monkfruit Powdered Sweetener in place of powdered sugar.
What To Bake Next:
- Want more use out of your donut pan? Try these Vegan Cinnamon Sugar Donuts, or these Vegan Copycat Entenmann’s Donuts, or these Vegan Coconut Donuts
- Want more blueberry goodness? Try these Fluffy Vegan Blueberry Muffins, or these Vegan Lemon Blueberry Scones, or this Vegan Blueberry Cake with Lemon Curd Filling.
- Want more fun fruit and berries? Try these Vegan Lemon Bars, or these Vegan Berry Crumble Bars, or this Vegan Lemon Pound Cake, or this Vegan Mimosa Cake.
Vegan Baked Blueberry Donuts with a Blueberry Glaze (Sugar Free and Gluten Free options)
Ingredients
Blueberry Glaze Ingredients
- ½ cup blueberries
- 2 tbsp granulated sugar *if you want a sugar free option, this links to my favorite sweetener, you can substitute it 1:1 in place of regular granulated sugar
- 2 tbsp water
- 1 cup powdered sugar *if you want a sugar free option, this links to my favorite powdered sweetener, you can substitute it 1:1 in place of regular powdered sugar
Blueberry Donut Ingredients
- 1 cup gluten free flour can sub all-purpose if desired. This links to my favorite store bought gluten free flour blend that works best with all of my recipes, or see "Ingredients Needed" section for further info.
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar *if you want a sugar free option, this links to my favorite sweetener, you can substitute it 1:1 in place of regular granulated sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ cup + 3 tbsp non-dairy milk
- 3 tbsp neutral oil
- 2 tbsp soda water see notes if you do not have any soda water
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/3 – ½ cup blueberries
Instructions
- The first step here is to make the blueberry reduction that will eventually become the blueberry glaze, since you want to let it cool for a little while. Place your blueberries, granulated sugar, and water into a small pot or saucepan. Heat on medium to bring it to a simmer, then let it simmer for around 5-7 minutes. During this time, use a spatula or spoon or fork to break up the blueberries.
- Once there are no large chunks left, remove the pan from the heat and use a fine mesh strainer to strain out the liquid. You will get around 3-4 tablespoons of liquid. Set it aside to cool entirely while making the donuts.
- For the donuts themselves, preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a donut pan. In a large bowl, mix together the gluten free flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt. Then add in the milk, neutral oil, soda water, and vanilla extract. Mix until just combined.
- Finally, add the blueberries into your batter. I go more in depth on this throughout the post, but doing ½ cup will really stuff the donuts with blueberries in a way that is delicious, but may leave them a little fragile, as it’s tougher for the donuts to hold their shape with that many bursting blueberries inside of them. So if you don’t want to run the risk of any donuts breaking in half, I’d recommend doing 1/3 cup instead.
- Once the batter is ready, spoon it evenly across the 6 donut molds in the pan. Bake for 15 minutes, then let them cool entirely in the pan before flipping them out onto a cooling rack.
- When the concentrated blueberry liquid is cooled and the donuts are cooled, it’s time to make the glaze. Simply mix the powdered sugar into the cooled blueberry liquid, adding a little at a time and mixing along the way until you reach your desired consistency. Then dip the donuts into the glaze adding as much as you want.
- Eat and enjoy!
Notes
- If you don’t have any sort of carbonated water, you can sub with regular filtered water. The bubbles in the soda water help keep the donut extra fluffy, but otherwise it will all work just the same.