Monster Donuts

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Monster Donuts are baked vanilla donuts decorated with buttercream frosting, edible eyeballs, and Halloween sprinkles for a fun Halloween treat that kids can decorate by themselves!

This post and recipe was created for #HalloweenTreatsWeek! 

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays.  I just love that it’s the beginning of fall and you get to dress up and there’s candy and monsters everywhere!  

I’m so excited that my 4 year old son seems to feel the same way about it. Last year was the first year he was really into Halloween and we didn’t get to much for the holiday. 

This year he is in Pre-K and I know he’ll be doing some fun activities and will have a Halloween parade at school.  Since I teach at his school I can’t wait to see him!

We’ve been doing a lot of Halloween crafts and treats over the last few weeks now that he loves measuring and helping in the kitchen.  So when I mentioned Monster Donuts he was totally in.

Ingredients:

• flour
• baking powder
• salt
• butter
• sugar (I used Dixie Crystals)
• eggs
• vanilla
• vanilla yogurt
• milk
• powdered sugar (I used Dixie Crystals)
• food coloring
• edible candy eyes
• Halloween sprinkles (optional)

1.  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Spray a donut pan with cooking spray and set aside.
2. In a large bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Mix well and set aside.
3. In a large bowl cream together the butter and Dixie Crystals Granulated Sugar.  Add in the eggs and vanilla and mix well to combine.
4. Stir in the milk and  until well vanilla yogurt mixed.
5. Add the butter and milk mixture to the flour mixture and mix well.
6. Divide the batter into three bowls.  Leave one bowl white, dye one bowl orange, and dye the third bowl green.  You can also choose to use the colors purple or black if you would prefer to keep it Halloween themed.
7. Put each batter into a zip top baggie and cut off the end. Pipe the batter into the donut pan being careful of how it comes out as the donuts will hold their shape but will just rise a bit.
8. Bake for 10 minutes. Allow to cool for a few minutes in the pan and then remove to a wire rack and cool completely.
9. In a large bowl use a mixer on medium speed to beat the butter.  Add in the Dixie Crystals Powdered Sugar and milk and mix until well combined. Add in vanilla and stir.
10. Divide the frosting into 3 bowls and color it green, orange, and black.   Of course you can make yours red, purple, or blue too if those are the colors you want the monsters to be.
11. Place the frosting into piping bags with different tips and pipe onto the donuts.  I used two tips to make fur and one skinny tip to make spider webs but use your imagination.
12. Top the donuts with edible eyes, sprinkles, and edible spiders if desired.

To start I made my vanilla donuts.   If you want to get fancy you can make pumpkin donuts and then they will already be orange or you could make chocolate donuts and they will be a deep brown or almost black color.  I just went with vanilla donuts so that I could dye them all the colors I wanted.

Once I had the donuts in the oven I made my buttercream frosting.  I made a small batch because you really don’t need a ton of frosting but if you are setting these up for kids to decorate at a party you may want to make a double batch of frosting because kids use a lot.

Can I use something in place of the vanilla yogurt?

There are two things that I know you can substitute as I’ve done it in other donut recipes.  You can use plain Greek yogurt in place of the vanilla yogurt and the donuts will have the same texture, they just won’t have as big of a vanilla flavor and won’t be quite as sweet.  You can also use sour cream in place of the yogurt and they will turn out fine.

I don’t have a donut pan, can I still make these?

If you want them to look like donuts then you really need a donut pan.  They are cheap to buy and they last a long time.  I have these ones and have been using them for 12 years and they still look and work great.  However, you can bake these in a muffin tin but they will be donut muffins instead of simply muffins.  Plus they will be hard to decorate and will look like cupcakes.

I can’t find edible eyeballs, what else can I use?

You can totally use white and black buttercream frosting with a fine tip or even a zip top baggie and cut off a very small hole and pipe on the eyes yourself!   I find that buying them is time saving and is great for when kids decorate but if you have the time pipe those bad boys on!

Your edible eyes look like they are a bit bloody. How did you make that red blood?

I simply used corn syrup and added red food coloring.  This is a great way to make edible blood for baked goods.  I used a toothpick to dab it onto the donuts.

Once the donuts cooled I set to work.  I colored a third of the donuts with a fur like tip in orange, half of the donuts in a fur like tip in green, and then made some spider webs with a thin tip and the black.  You can really do any design you want.

I then put some edible eyes onto the donuts that had fur.  One of the donuts looked like a pumpkin so I piped on eyes, nose, and a pumpkin mouth instead.   These are your Halloween donuts so do your thing!

I happen to find some candy spiders in my baking closet which is why I piped on the spider webs.  You can easily make spiders by piping black buttercream frosting on the donuts as well.

More Halloween Recipes:

• Silly Pumpkin Cupcakes
• Halloween Graveyard Cupcakes
• Halloween Haystacks
• Halloween Party Mix
• Halloween Hot Chocolate

I was really pleased with how these turned out.  They were colored and fun.   While they still looked like monsters, they weren’t scary ones so I knew kids would enjoy them.  My son just started laughing when we were decorating them because he thought they were funny looking.

If you’ve tried my Monster Donuts or any other recipe on Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks please take a minute to rate the recipe and leave a comment letting me know how you liked it. I love hearing from you! You can FOLLOW ME on:

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Monster Donuts

Yield: 12 donuts

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 40 minutes

Baked vanilla donuts decorated with buttercream frosting, edible eyeballs, and Halloween sprinkles for a fun Halloween treat!

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Ingredients

For the donuts:

• 1 1/3 c. flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 c. (1 stick) butter
• 2/3 c. sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/2 c. vanilla yogurt
• 1/2 c. milk
• orange and green food coloring

For the frosting:

• 1/2 c. (1 stick) butter
• 2 c. powdered sugar
• 2 Tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• orange, green, and black food coloring
• edible candy eyes
• Halloween sprinkles (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Spray a donut pan with cooking spray and set aside.
2. In a large bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Mix well and set aside.
3. In a medium bowl cream together the butter and sugar.  Add in the eggs and vanilla and mix well.
4. Stir in the milk and vanilla yogurt until well mixed.
5. Add the butter mixture to the flour mixture and mix well.
6. Divide the batter into three bowls.  Leave one bowl white, dye one bowl orange, and dye the third bowl green. 
7. Put each batter into a zip top baggie and cut off the end. Pipe the batter into the donut pan. You will make 4 donuts of each color.
8. Bake for 10 minutes. Allow to cool for 2 minutes in the pan and then remove to a wire rack and cool completely.
9. To make the frosting beat the butter in a large bowl use a mixer on medium speed.  
10. Add in the powdered sugar and milk and mix on medium high speed or until well combined. Add in vanilla and stir.
11. Divide the frosting into 3 bowls and color it green, orange, and black.  
12. Place the frosting into piping bags with different tips and pipe onto the donuts.  I used two tips to make fur and one skinny tip to make spider webs but use your imagination.
13. Top the donuts with edible eyes, sprinkles, and edible spiders if desired.

Notes

A Hezzi-D original recipe