Healthy chocolate frosted donuts are easy to make and use 6 healthy main ingredients, including a hidden veggie, and no eggs, no oil, vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free. Plus these donuts are glazed with a luscious 2-ingredient chocolate frosting, made from just chocolate chips and dairy-free milk. View step by step video in this post.
Healthy Chocolate Frosted Donuts
If you've never made a baked donut, this is the recipe for you. It's so easy, it's fail-proof, it's fun and delicious.
Table of Contents For this Post
It's easy because it only need 6 main ingredients, and a few pantry items including vanilla and spices. They are stirred up in a bowl and baked. Done! Don't have a donut pan? Use a muffin pan.
Fail-proof because the hidden veggie - sweet potato puree or pumpkin puree - and baking powder lift them beautifully.
And it's fun because DONUTS. CHOCOLATE. FROSTING. SPRINKLES.
These donuts are already low in sugar, but you can even reduce the sugar further, I'll explain how below. But meanwhile, just so you know, if you are interested in a classic baked donut recipe that does use oil, try my Chocolate Baked Donuts recipe here.
How Do You Make Chocolate Frosted Donuts From Scratch?
It's very easy to make chocolate frosted donuts from scratch by tossing together flour, milk, cocoa, sugar, and baking powder. And no eggs or oil, instead I used sweet potato puree, or pumpkin puree both of which replaces eggs and oil beautifully and helps the donuts rise and stay moist. PLUS both sweet potato and pumpkin are full of nutrients.
If you can't find pumpkin puree, sweet potato puree or even butternut squash puree and finally unsweetened apple sauce all work as well!
Before we dive into the recipe, I'd like to invite you to sign up for my free chocolate course. Five lessons hit your inbox with detail on how to create your own simple healthy chocolate desserts.
Okay, so back to this recipe...
How to Make Baked Glazed Donuts Without Donut Pan
Yes, this can be done. If you don't want to buy a donut pan, you can make this batter in a muffin pan. Fill muffin wells about ⅔rds and bake at 18 minutes.
This donut recipe using a donut pan makes 6 fat donuts or 12 skinny donuts.
Baked Donuts That Taste like Fried
The combination of these ingredients creates a delicious cakey yet light donut that tastes like fried with chocolate glaze! Now these are healthier donuts using veggie puree instead of oil.
Why You'll Love These Chocolate Glazed Donuts
- only 6 main ingredients
- no dairy, no eggs, no oil
- stir batter with a spoon
- baked not fried
- soft and cakey
- taste like bakery donuts
- 2-ingredient chocolate glaze - just chips and milk
- low calorie, low sugar, high fiber
Steps to Make Chocolate Frosted Donuts
My complete recipe is below and a step by step video is here but here is a brief overview:
Step 1. First grease your donut pan. I use a light avocado oil spray, spritz a single spot in the donut well, and use a paper towel corner to rub it around the well.
Step 2. Then, prepare the batter by mixing up the dry ingredients first. I also pushed it through a fine strainer to be sure the chocolate cocoa chunks full incorporated.
Step 3. Then mix up the wet ingredients in a different bowl, and pour that into the dry. Stir up until just combined. Not too much or batter will be come rubbery.
Step 4. Pour it into a plastic zip log bag or a frosting bag, snip the tip, and pipe batter into each donut well. This donut recipe using a donut pan makes 6 fat donuts or 12 skinny donuts.
Or spoon batter into a muffin pan and make 9-12 muffins.
Step 5. Bake and cool!
Step 6. Glaze these donuts by stirring up my 2-ingredient glaze and dipping cooled donuts. Allow the glaze to set about thirty minutes. Store at room-temperature for one day. These donuts are best eaten same day since oat flour dries out fairly quickly.
Tips On How to Make Delicious Chocolate Frosted Donuts
My first tip is use quality flavorful ingredients. These are most important regarding the cocoa and veggie puree.
For the cocoa, I use Ghirardelli Unsweetened Cocoa Powder because it's vegan and has a deep chocolate flavor. Valhrona cocoa also has an awesome flavor, but I'm not sure it's vegan; I am trying to get that answer. Comment if you know if it is please.
For the veggie puree, I use canned sweet potato, but pumpkin puree also works. The brand Farmer's Market is great because the ingredients are ONLY the vegetable, but other brands are good too, such as Whole Foods 365. Just be sure the ingredients are ONLY the vegetable. Also, if you decide to use pumpkin puree, don't mistakenly buy pumpkin PIE puree because that has added sugar and other ingredients and is not pure pumpkin.
I imagine you can also use home-made purees by steaming either sweet potatoes or pumpkin and whipping them into a creamy puree. I have never done that though, comment on any tips if you have and used that in this recipe.
My next tip is on how to lower the sugar in this recipe. To lower the sugar, use only ¼ cup cane sugar, half of what the recipe calls for. If you choose to do this, I advise you use the sweet potato puree, not pumpkin, for the veggie puree to support a sweeter flavor despite the missing sugar. Also add a bit more cinnamon as that also accentuates a sweeter flavor.
Since the sugar in this recipe is pretty low already, you will want to taste-test. To do this, whip up the batter with only half the sugar the recipe calls for. Taste the batter. If it is sweet enough, bake! If not, mix in the remaining ¼ cup of sugar or a bit less and mix again. It's okay that you are adding sugar at the end.
Other Healthy Baked Donut Recipes
Chocolate Baked Donuts
Chocolate Frosted Donuts
Funfetti Vanilla Baked Birthday Donuts
Date Sugar Donut Recipe
Pumpkin Spice Donuts
Chocolate Chickpea Protein Donuts
Chocolate Chickpea Chocolate Glazed Donuts
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Chocolate Frosted Donuts
Ingredients
Donuts
- 1 ¾ cup oat flour Or 1 ¼ cup all-purpose or GF baking 1 to 1 flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder (or cacao powder which is healthier but more expensive)
- ½ cup dairy-free milk
- ½ cups sweet potato puree or pumpkin purée or unsweetened apple sauce
- ½ cup organic cane sugar *See notes on how to lower sugar further in this recipe
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 2 tbsp coffee
- 1 tsp vanilla
- pinch of salt
Chocolate Glaze
- 1 cup chocolate chips (I used enjoylife brand, semi-sweet mini chips, 70% cacao)
- ¼ cup dairy-free milk
- ¼ cup chocolate sprinkles (to coat the top of each glazed donut)
Instructions
Prep
- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Grease a 6-well donut pan or cupcake pan.
Make Donuts
- In a large bowl, mix up oat flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, cinnamon, and salt.
- In a smaller bowl, stir up either pumpkin or sweet potato puree, sugar, milk, coffee, and vanilla. Pour the wet into the dry mixture.
- Use a hand mixer to blend smooth.
- Use a frosting piping bag or use a spoon to fill the wells to the top. You can just snip the piping bag to use it, no need to use a frosting tip. Or use a zip-lock bag with corner snipped. Push the bag in a tall glass to fill it. Then squeeze batter into donut pan rings.
- Fill up to the top for 6 donuts; fill just under the rim for 12 donuts.
- Bake donuts for 12 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.
- Cool pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.
Bake Donuts Mixture in Muffin Pan
- Fill each paper-lined muffin well about ⅔rds and bake at 12 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. I got about 9 muffins this way, but you can make them smaller and get 12.
Make Chocolate Glaze
- Put the chocolate chips in a glass pyrex measuring cup, microwave at 1 min and stir until all chips are melted. Microwave an additional 10 seconds if chips need more melted.
- Stir in the milk, and stir vigorously until you have a creamy, shiny glaze. Pour glaze into a shallow bowl for dipping donuts in.
- Dip one side of each donut, allow excess to drip off, and set non-glazed side down on a cool rack. Allow glaze to set, about 10 minutes or less.
Store
- Store covered lightly for one day on the counter; any longer and they turn soggy. You can refrigerate them covered for a week, or freeze for a month. If you freeze, just set them on the counter to defrost for 20 minutes.
Chelsea
Fantastic! My kids loved helping to make these. I think they'll be a new Saturday morning go-to recipe.
Dee Dine
Thanks for sharing Chelsea!