I know, I know. I just posted a recipe for 15-minute donut holes a few days ago. But I’m kinda going through a donut kick at the moment. So I figured, why not? I’ll take any excuse to eat a donut.

Besides, these babies are based off an old-fashioned cake donut dough. What’s the difference between regular donuts and cake donuts? Again, it all comes back to leavening. Regular donuts are raised by yeast, while cake donuts are raised by baking powder.

Old-fashioned donuts, however, are a different breed of cake donut. While cake donut batter requires a piping bag to form the donuts, old-fashioned donut dough is more like regular bread dough, requiring you to roll out the dough and use a cutter to form the donuts. And since the batter contains a lot of fat and hardly any liquid, the donuts split and crack all over the place when fried, resulting in a crisp crust with all sorts of crags to catch the donut glaze:

I started out this recipe with the intention of making actual donuts and not donut holes, but as I rolled out the dough, I realized I had misplaced my donut cutter somewhere along the move from Denver to Portland . So I had to improvise and roll mine into dough balls to create donut holes.

These donuts tasted exactly like the old-fashioned donuts I’ve had in donut shops, and fried up beautifully to boot. The hardest part about the whole baking process was waiting for the glaze to set on the donuts so I could finally eat them all. 😀