Vegan Cinnamon + Chia Jam Donuts 🍩

Even though I am not vegan, Lucy Watson's "Feed Me Vegan" book is one of my fav books to cook and bake from. When I saw her donut recipe, I just had to try it out. I've never made donuts before though so I was ver nervous. Since I had a day off yesterday, I thought I might as well give it a try as I had the time! I wanted to make these slightly healthier so I've decided to modify her recipe.

I honestly am trying to work out the calories in each donut but I don't fully understand how much oil is absorbed by each donut so I can't say. The only thing I can say is that I've decreased the amount of sugar Lucy had in her dough and have replaced it with Stevia + set honey. The filling is also (obviously) my homemade chia jam (not store-bought raspberry jam) so at least you can be assured that it is a lot healthier than donuts you buy in bakeries or supermarkets. In the meantime if anyone knows how I can count the calories for these yummy, fluffy donut holes, please hit me up! At the moment, if we think around 1/2tsp of vegetable oil is absorbed by these donuts, each donut hole comes down to around ~100 calories (more notes on this at the very bottom of this page).

Enjoy these donuts! They are a bit fiddly to start with but it seems quite fool-proof to me. Let us know how you get on 🥰

Serves: 28-30 donut holes (I managed to make 31)

Difficulty: Level 3

Wow factor: ⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ingredients

For the donuts:

• 1tbsp caster sugar

• 7gr fast-action dried yeast

• 240ml warm water

• 20gr sweet granules with Stevia (this is what I used)

• 35gr set honey (you can also use maple syrup or other natural sweeteners)

• 40gr vegan butter, melted (I used PURE Sunflower Spread)

• 1tsp vanilla extract

• 430gr plain flour

• 1/2tsp baking powder

• 1tsp ground cinnamon

• 1tbsp olive oil for greasing

For filling and dusting:

• Chia jam (you can use our recipe here, I think I used around 1/2 cup of chia jam to fill all the donuts)

• 5tbsp caster sugar

• 2tsp ground cinnamon

Instructions

Part 1: The Donut Dough

1. In a mixing bowl, mix yeast, 1tbsp caster sugar with warm water. Mix and let it froth on the side for 5-10 minutes.

2. Line a baking tray with baking paper for the donut dough later.

3. In a large mixing bowl, mix melted butter and vanilla extract using a spatula.

4. Sift in your flour, baking powder, and 1tsp ground cinnamon. This will start to look very thick, and that's okay.

5. If you are using set honey like me, please make sure you heat your set honey on a small saucepan first so it is in a pourable consistency. If using squeezy, runny honey, place proceed to the next step and skip this step.

6. Add your stevia and runny honey into the big mixing bowl. Mix it around with a spatula and make a well in the center. Pour in the yeast mixture. Mix well until the mixture comes together to form a dough.

7. Remove dough from the bowl and knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for 3-4 minutes until the dough is smooth and shiny. If too sticky, don't be afraid to add a little bit more flour, but add 1 teaspoon at a time as you want to stop as soon as the dough is pliable and shiny. If you add too much the donuts will not be fluffy and fun, so please be careful!

8. Clean out the bowl and lightly grease it with olive oil. Put the dough back in this bowl and cover with a damp cloth in a warm place so it can rest and double in size.

9. Let the dough rest for at least an hour.

Part 2: Frying the Donuts

1. When an hour has passed and the dough has doubled in size, this is the time to cut your dough. Your dough should also be really fluffy and you should also be able to see air bubbles.

2. Turn out the dough on a lightly floured surface and using a ruler, ensure the thickness is 2.5cm. Yes, it's quite thick but this is why the donuts will be so fluffy!

3. Using a 4cm or a 5cm round cookie cutter (I used a small cookie jar with a 4cm top) to cut out these donuts. Place them on the baking tray with the baking paper and let them rest and rise again for another 15 minutes.

4. On a small plate, mix 5tbsp caster sugar and 2tbsp ground cinnamon. Set aside.

5. In a small or medium-sized frying pan, fill it half-way with frying oil (I used vegetable oil but you can also use olive oil, sunflower oil or rapeseed oil). You can also use a deep-fat fryer if you have one. Ensure the oil is 170 degrees celsius before you drop these babies in.

6. Lower the dough one at a time. I cooked about 4 donuts in a small saucepan. Cook each side for 1-2 minutes until golden brown. The donuts should puff up and look really perky.

7. Once you are happy with the colour, remove from oil and drain on kitchen paper for the excess oil to be absorbed.

Part 3: Dusting and Filling the Donuts

1. The best time to dust the donuts is when they're still warm so go ahead and duck these donuts in the sugar and cinnamon dusting and coat these donuts all over.

2. Once you have fried and dusted all the donuts, you can start filling them with chia jam if desired.

3. Put chia jam into a piping bag with a big enough hole for the jam to pass through. Poke a hole into each donut and pipe a little jam into each donut hole. It's quite hard to tell at first how much jam to put in but you'll get the hang of it. ENJOY WARM with a cuppa or on its own!

I know, there are a lot of steps but it's soooo worth it. Enjoy friends! Let us know if you try it out 😘

Hot tip: I wouldn't recommend keeping them as I've tried some this morning and the donuts were a bit soggy from the sugar and I don't imagine popping them in the microwave or oven will help. If you don't plan on eating so many, perhaps half this recipe, but if you don't mind day-old donuts then maybe don't dust and fill all of them on the day. Just keep them plain in a sealed container and heat them up, fill them with jam and dust them in sugar before serving.

Calorie counting: I forgot to measure how much oil I used for frying but I was using a small pan and filled it up half-way. By the end of frying I was left with 77gr of vegetable oil, and that was half of what it was before. So say I had 140gr in total. If we divide 70gr of oil into teaspoons (1tsp of oil = 4.67gr), it is roughly 15 teaspoons. Since I made 31 donuts, I just divided 15 by 31 and this is why I've come to the conclusion it is 0.5tsp per donut! Apologies it's quite hard to tell, but I'll measure better the next time I made these donuts.