Sometimes I get lucky with an idea for a recipe, gather my ingredients, and nail it on the first attempt. These donuts were not one of those recipes.
I somehow got it in my head that it would be the best thing ever to fuse a donut, with a muffin, with cornbread. Something involving cornmeal, and where the finished product would be a denser, heartier cake. Apparently, that’s easier said than done, especially when you also decide to make this baked good vegan and gluten-free.
It took me three attempts to get these cornbread-inspired donuts right. I tried them with and without a flax egg, with different ratios of cornmeal to flour, and also played around with the types of flours. I ended up nixing the flax egg, reducing the cornmeal, and going with my current favorite combination of gluten-free flours: white rice, sorghum, and potato starch (I think tapioca starch would also work well).
Lemon-blueberry just seemed like the perfect flavor pairing for the cornmeal. Then again, I like to find any excuse to use lemons and blueberries together. And the good news? You can use either fresh or frozen berries. The frozen berries will add a slight purple swirl to the batter, but if you like, you can minimize this by lightly coating them in a little flour before you fold them in at the end.
So, yes. It took me several attempts to bring this recipe from idea to reality, and I may or may not have subsisted almost exclusively on donuts this weekend. But really, sometimes half the fun is just spending an afternoon (and a morning) in the kitchen, covered in flour and powdered sugar, and eating your way through three donuts in a row for the sake of quality control.
Donut meets muffin meets cornbread. Life. is. good.
- ⅔ C. Finely Ground Cornmeal
- ⅔ C. Sweet White Rice Flour
- ⅓ C. Sorghum Flour
- ⅓ C. Potato Starch
- 1 Tbs. Baking Powder
- ½ Tsp. Xanthan Gum
- ¼ Tsp. Sea Salt
- ½ C. + 2 Tbs. Unsweetened Non-Dairy Milk
- ⅓ C. Coconut Sugar (or other vegan sugar)
- 2 Tbs. Lemon Juice + 1 Tbs. Lemon Zest
- 2 Tbs. Coconut Oil, melted
- 2 Tbs. Unsweetened Applesauce
- 1 Tsp. Vanilla Extract
- ⅔ C. Fresh or Frozen Blueberries
- 1 C. Organic Powdered Sugar
- 3-4 Tsp. Lemon Juice
- Pinch Sea Salt
- Lemon Zest (for garnish)
- Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Lightly grease a donut pan (I like to use coconut oil).
- In a large bowl, combine the cornmeal, white rice flour, sorghum flour, potato starch, baking powder, xanthan gum, and sea salt.
- In a small bowl, combine the non-dairy milk, sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest, melted coconut oil, applesauce, and vanilla.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until they’re just combined.
- Fold in the blueberries. Be careful not to over-mix.
- Spoon or pipe the batter into the greased donut pan. I find that piping it is easier, as the batter will be very thick.
- Bake the donuts for 20-22 minutes, until they are golden brown and firm to the touch.
- Remove the donuts from the oven and allow them to cool.
- While the donuts are cooling, prepare the lemon glaze by sifting the powdered sugar into a medium bowl to remove any lumps.
- Whisk in the lemon juice and pinch of sea salt until no lumps remain.
- Once the donuts have cooled, dip each donut into the lemon glaze and set them aside on a lined baking sheet or cooling rack.
- Garnish the donuts with lemon zest and allow the frosting to set.
- The donuts can be stored at room temperature for a couple of days, or in the fridge for 4-5 days.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
cornbread plus muffin plus donut! you are a genius! these look delicious and i love how healthy they are, especially without the glaze
job well done!
Thanks, Caitlin! You could definitely skip the glaze if you wanted to keep the sugar to a minimum.
Looks amazing! I need a donut pan soooo bad. I came across one at Ross the other day, and passed it up for some reason. I love the idea of the lemon glaze too!
I was worried I might not get much use out of my donut pan, but I actually use it all the time. $13 well-spent.
I don’t have a doughnut pan either- but you are KILLING me with this recipe! I love the lemon/blueberry combo – and CORNBREAD. Ooooh man.
But, I don’t have any of the flours or potato starch. I have everything else… think I could just sub a mix of oat and coconut flours? Or pastry flour? I guess I could always give it a shot…
I’d recommend the pastry flour. Oat/coconut flour might be too heavy, and the coconut flour would require playing around with the amount of milk. If you give it a try, let me know how it turns out! You could also halve the recipe just in case the result is less than ideal.
Also, skip the xanthan gum if you use flour with gluten.
I’ve been wanting to play around with a gluten-free cornbready-blueberrry type of thingie and boom, here it is. And the fact that there is a lemon glaze – well, that’s really perfect.
Lemon glaze makes everything better.
I live for blueberries – and doughnuts! These look delicious.
Me too! I’m eating as many blueberries as possible this summer.
These look great and I’ve been looking for a recipe to use up my sweet white rice flour and corn flour. I have three quick questions though. First, would this corn flour work for the finely ground cornmeal your recipe asks for?
http://www.bobsredmill.com/gluten-free-corn-flour.html?&cat=
It’s Bob’s Red Mill. I wanted to ask first because your recipe says to use cornmeal, but this is corn flour. Or is finely ground cornmeal the same thing as corn flour? Secondly, did you use dried lemon zest in your recipe or fresh? And lastly, did you use frozen or fresh blueberries in your recipe? Specifically in your pictures. Which turned out great. Hopefully you can help me out and answer these questions. I’m hoping to make these tonight. Thanks!
The corn flour would definitely give it a different texture, since it’s a lot finer than even finely ground cornmeal. I haven’t tried baking with it, but my guess is that it would result in a cake-like texture as opposed to a bread.
I used fresh lemon zest. And as for the blueberries, I’ve used fresh and frozen, and both have worked well. The frozen tend to bleed a bit in the batter and turn it blue/purple, but you can minimize that by tossing them in a little flour and carefully folding them in. The photos in my post were from when I used frozen berries.
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