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Looking for a gluten free donut recipe? You can enjoy these gluten free donuts from the comfort of your own kitchen, and they’re baked, not fried!
If you’ve spent much time on the internet, you may have run into one or two or ten people who you’ve never met, but feel like you’ve known them for ages. We’ve been lucky to find several relationships like these, one of which being Ashley from Edible Perspective. We first connected through our mutual passions for gardening, photography, and vegetarian recipes, and more recently home remodeling. And now, she’s come out with a cookbook, Baked Doughnuts for Everyone! This gluten free donut recipe is a preview from the book, and man, is it detastlicious! Keep reading for the recipe and a bit more about the book.
Making this gluten free donut recipe
Even though sweets aren’t usually our forte, we were happy to find that the gluten free donut recipes from Baked Doughnuts for Everyone are easy to make and full of wholesome flours like oat flour and almond meal. There’s truly something for everyone in the book: from healthy to savory, to decadent.
These pistachio honey doughnuts are from the “Healthed Up” chapter and use a healthier spin on the base recipe. They were a fun project and turned out delicious with a sweet, spongy cake and a honey glaze. For this gluten free donut recipe and all of the recipes in the book, you’ll need a doughnut pan. Since the donuts are baked and not fried, you’ll pour the dough into the pan.
Gluten free donuts ingredients
You’ll need a few special flours for this gluten free donut recipe: oat flour, pistachio meal, almond meal, flax meal, and rice flour. The first four can actually be made at home by grinding them in a food processor and/or spice grinder. The rice flour has to be purchased, but these days it’s fairly easy to find online.
Aside from these items, the other ingredients in these gluten free donuts are pretty standard: oil, milk, egg, honey, applesauce; what you’d expect in standard baked goods!
How to make gluten free donuts
This gluten free donut recipe couldn’t be simpler to make! Just whisk together the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet in another, then combine the two. Pop the dough into the doughnut pan and bake for about 20 minutes.
Then you’ll top these gluten free donuts with honey and chopped pistachios. And the flavor? Fluffy, sweet, and so good you won’t want to stop eating them.
About the book: Baked Doughnuts for Everyone
We thought we’d sit down with Ashley and ask her a few questions to provide some more info on the book, Baked Doughnuts for Everyone. We’ve provided a summary of the chat below (though we originally recorded it live, the quality was such that we weren’t able to share it with you–darn!). Thanks to Ashley for her time — and it was so nice to finally talk “in person”.
How did this cookbook come about? Prompted by the increased popularity of baked doughnut recipes, a publisher contacted Ashley with the idea of creating a cookbook. She saw Ashley already had several variations of gluten free donut recipes on her blog. To give the publisher an idea of her recipes, Ashley even shipped doughnuts overnight to the publisher while they were trying to decide whether it was a good fit (guess it won them over!). Once she got the job, she developed and photographed all recipes in just 3 months in her own kitchen.
How about the base recipe? Ashley usually doesn’t work with all-purpose gluten-free flours, but instead likes to use wholesome flours like oat flour and almond meal. She tried to come up with a base recipe for doughnuts that uses flours that are relatively easy to find (for example, you can make your own oat flour in your food processor).
Wow, 100 doughnut flavors! How did you come up with them? Ashley told us she made a huge list and emailed her entire family and friends to ask their favorite doughnuts and flavor combinations. She also looked to Jeni’s Ice Cream (the famous Ohio ice cream parlor) for interesting flavor combinations like chocolate cayenne and blackberry basil.
Ashley’s favorite recipes? Apple Fritter, Carrot Cake, Chocolate Cinnamon Roll, Red Velvet (colored naturally with beet puree), and Tiramisu are some of Ashley’s favorites, along with most of the options in the Savory chapter (like Garlic Spinach, Jalapeno Cheddar, and Stuffed Greek with Feta Cream Cheese Spread).
Looking for healthy desserts?
While we go to desserts for a splurge, we love finding healthy desserts that are big on flavor. Outside of this gluten free donut recipe, here are a few of our favorite healthy desserts:
- Chocolate Peanut Butter Bliss Bites (a favorite!)
- Dark Chocolate Cherry Quinoa Bark
- Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp
- Berries and Yogurt Whipped Cream
- Chocolate Peanut Butter Mousse
- Mocha Almond Fudge Vegan Ice Cream
- Amazing Gluten Free Chocolate Cake
- Easy Bananas Foster Recipe
- Chai Spice Almond Snowball Cookies
This gluten free donut recipe is…
Vegetarian and gluten free.
Gluten Free Donut Recipe
Looking for a gluten free donut recipe? You can enjoy these gluten free doughnuts from the comfort of your own kitchen, and they’re baked, not fried!
- Prep Time: 40 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour
- Yield: 8 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
- ½ cup oats or oat flour
- ¼ cup pistachios or pistachio meal
- ¼ cup almonds or almond meal
- 2 tablespoons flax seeds or ground flax meal
- ¼ cup sweet rice flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 large egg
- ⅓ cup milk
- ¼ cup honey
- ¼ cup unsweetened applesauce
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- ¾ cup ground pistachios
- ⅛ teaspoon salt (if pistachios are not salted)
- ¼ cup honey
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F and grease your doughnut pan.
- If using whole oats, pistachios, almonds, and/or flax seeds, do the following: Grind ½ cup oats into a fine flour in a food processor. Then grind ¼ cup pistachios into a fine meal in a coffee grinder or food processor, and do the same with ¼ cup almonds and 2 tablespoons flax seeds (separately).
- Combine the oat flour, pistachio meal, almond meal, and flax meal along with ¼ cup sweet rice flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and ½ teaspoon salt in a large bowl, mixing well. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg. Then whisk in ½ cup milk, ¼ cup honey, ¼ cup applesauce, 1 tablespoon oil, and 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract.
- Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and stir with a large wooden spoon until just combined, being careful not to overmix (stop when you no longer see dry flour).
- Spoon the batter into the doughnut molds, filling to just below the top of each mold. Bake for 18 to 22 minutes until lightly golden brown around the edges. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Slide a thin spatula around the edges of the doughnuts to help loosen them out. Then place on a cooling rack and allow to cool fully before topping.
- To make the topping, chop ¾ cup pistachios. In a bowl, mix the pistachios and salt together (if using unsalted nuts). In a microwavable bowl, add ¼ cup honey, and microwave about 20 seconds until hot. Place parchment paper under the cooling racks, then generously spoon honey over the tops of the doughnuts. Top each doughnut with ground pistachios. Let cool and serve.
Is there a substitute for rice flour? I wonder if quinoa flour or more oat flour would work…. Please respond! These donuts look amazing and I would love to be able to make them!
Hello! Actually, in Ashley’s book she states that there is not a good substitute for the sweet rice flour – it helps to make a nice texture. You can find it online at http://www.ener-g.com/sweet-rice-flour.html
Ooooh! I would love to try those pistachio donuts. Yum! Trying to cook and bake more gluten free too. I could use this book!
Oh my gosh, my bf walked up as I was reading this and demanded we make them right away!! I’m not much of a baker but I’ll give it a go! These look amazing! Do you think that coconut flour would work as a sub for the oats?
Hi Linda! This recipe is fairly easy to follow and put together, so don’t worry about being much of a baker! I’d probably stick to the recipe and use the oats to get the best texture. We haven’t used coconut flour before, so I’m not quite sure how it would turn out. Best of luck!
Pistachios are becoming all the rage, aren’t they? These would be especially fun to make around the holidays due to their pretty green color.