Name: Baked Pumpkin Doughnuts
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 35 min
Ingredients: 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled); 1/2 cup granulated sugar; 1/4 cup brown sugar; 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice; 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg; 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder; 1/2 teaspoon baking soda; 1/2 teaspoon salt; 3/4 cup pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling); 1/4 cup buttermilk; 1 large egg; 6 tablespoons butter (melted and slightly cooled); 1 teaspoon vanilla extract; 4 tablespoons butter (melted); 1/2 cup granulated sugar; 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

These award-winning baked pumpkin doughnuts are made without ever touching a pot of frying oil. The batter is flour, sugar, canned pumpkin, buttermilk, melted butter, pumpkin pie spice, and an extra hit of nutmeg, stirred together by hand in one bowl and then baked. Then every one gets rolled in melted butter and cinnamon sugar while it’s still warm.

Baked pumpkin doughnut holes coated in cinnamon sugar, stacked on a white plate beside a mug of coffee

Pumpkin Doughnuts Without the Cider Mill Trip

Autumn isn’t complete without pumpkin doughnuts! And while we can, and will, get them at our local cider mills here in Michigan, we don’t always want to make a special trip. So I came up with this simple recipe for a baked version that tastes just as good as the fried ones, if not better.

Baking them instead of frying them turned out to be the better in another way. Fried doughnuts are a same-day food. They’re wonderful for about four hours and merely fine after that, which isn’t a great for a treat you’d like to enjoy for several days. Plus, baked ones keep on the counter for days and freeze for months, and that matters to me all fall when my holiday events have me cooking ahead for weeks at a time. A tray of these in the freezer is a very good thing to have.

I happened to make these the day before our local fair began, so I entered them in the Baking division on a whim. I’m humbled the judges agreed they were delicious and gave them a first place blue ribbon.

Let’s dig in!

A place of cinnamon sugar pumpkin doughnut holes with a Chelsea Community Fair blue first place ribbon

Tips and Notes Before You Start

You pick the shape. Make these as easy doughnut holes in any old muffin pan (my preference), or use a doughnut pan to make the traditional shape.
Store-bought pumpkin pie spice is the main flavor here. If you’d rather mix your own, the exact blend is down in the FAQs.
Nutmeg is the “secret ingredient.” It’s the flavor that makes a cake doughnut taste like a doughnut, so there’s a half teaspoon on top of what’s already in the pumpkin pie spice.
We use real pumpkin! Just be sure to use canned pumpkin puree, not pumpkin pie filling. Pie filling is already sweetened and spiced, and it will throw the whole recipe off.
That cinnamon sugar coating is SO good. The butter dunk and cinnamon sugar roll at the end is not really optional. Skip it and you’ve made a pumpkin muffin instead.
You can make it with sourdough starter if you prefer. There’s a whole section below on swapping it in, and it’s an easy change.
These freeze beautifully, so bake the full batch even if you can’t eat lots of doughnut holes this week. Freeze them bare and coat them after they’re warmed up.

What You Need to Make These

This is a one-bowl batter with nothing unusual in it, so here’s what each thing is doing.

Labeled ingredients for baked pumpkin doughnuts: flour, granulated sugar, brown sugar, buttermilk or sourdough starter, pumpkin puree, spices, melted butter, egg, vanilla, salt, baking powder and baking soda

Granulated sugar and light brown sugar. The brown sugar does more than sweeten. The molasses in it keeps the crumb soft an extra day or two, which is a real difference in something you’re storing.
All-purpose flour. Spoon it into the cup and level it off instead of scooping with the measuring cup. Scooping packs in extra flour, and these go dry in a hurry when that happens.
Canned pumpkin puree. Plain puree, nothing added. Pumpkin is mostly water, and that’s what makes these tender instead of crumbly. I’d stick with the canned stuff to be sure it is uniform.
Buttermilk. Small amount, big job. No buttermilk in the fridge? Stir 3/4 teaspoon of lemon juice or white vinegar into 1/4 cup of milk and let it sit 5 minutes. If you’d rather use sourdough starter here, see the notes below.
Pumpkin pie spices plus extra nutmeg. The extra nutmeg is the doughnut flavor.
Melted butter. Butter rather than oil, because you can taste it in something this small. Melt it first and let it cool for a minute so it doesn’t scramble the egg.
Baking powder and baking soda. Both. The powder does the lifting, and the soda works with the buttermilk for browning and a little extra rise.

How to Make Baked Pumpkin Doughnuts

It’s really just mix the batter, bake, then butter and roll. There’s no mixer, no chilling, no rolling out dough, and no hot oil. L

Step 1: Stir together the batter

Whisk the flour, both sugars, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. In a second bowl, whisk the pumpkin, buttermilk, egg, melted butter, and vanilla until smooth. Pour the wet into the dry and stir with a spatula just until you can’t see dry flour anymore, then stop. Be careful not to overmix here, because that develops the gluten and gives you tough doughnut holes with tunnels through the middle. A few lumps in the bowl are exactly right.

Step 2: Fill the pan and bake

You can use a regular doughnut mold or, to make doughnut holes, a mini muffin pan. Grease whatever you use generously, even a nonstick pan. Greased metal browns the outsides, and browning is a lot of what makes these read as doughnuts.

To make traditional doughnut shapes in a doughnut pan: Fill each cavity 2/3rds full and be sure to keep the batter below the top of the center post. If you overfill it past this, the batter domes over the middle as it rises, the hole closes up, and it just makes a bagel shape. Bake at 375°F for 10 to 12 minutes, until the tops spring back when you touch them.

To make doughnut holes in a muffin pan: fill each cup just level with the top, using a cookie scoop if you have one. This helps because same-size portions dome into round little balls, while eyeballed spoonfuls come out lopsided. Bake at 375°F for 13 to 15 minutes, until the tops spring back when you touch them.

They won’t brown much on top, and that’s totally normal, since most of the color on these comes from the greased pan and the coating. Try not to open the door before the 10-minute mark.

Step 3: Butter, roll, and eat

Let them sit in the pan for 3 minutes, which is long enough to firm up and not so long that they steam and go soggy on the bottom. Then tip them out. While they’re still warm, drop each one into the melted butter, roll it around, lift it out, and tumble it in the cinnamon sugar until it’s covered on every side. Every side, not just the top. Don’t worry if the first one seems messy… they all look the same once they’re coated, and any lumpy spots disappear under the sugar.

How to Use Sourdough Discard Instead

If you keep a sourdough starter going, this recipe takes discard happily, and the faint tang it brings keeps all that pumpkin spice from tasting flat. Use it cold and unfed, straight from the fridge. There’s no timing to plan around and no rise to wait for, so the recipe stays just as quick.

Two changes, and everything else stays the same:

Reduce the flour to 2 cups.
Leave out the buttermilk, and stir in 1/2 cup of sourdough discard with the wet ingredients.

The reason those two numbers work is that a 100% hydration starter is really just equal parts flour and water. Half a cup of discard is carrying about a quarter cup of each, so you take that much flour back out of the recipe and drop the buttermilk that was standing in for the water. Keep the baking soda exactly where it is, because the discard is acidic enough to activate it the same way the buttermilk did.

The baked doughnut holes with starter taste a little more grown-up. If you have more discard than this uses, my sourdough discard biscuits are where the rest of mine usually goes.

Closeup of the baked pumpkin doughnut holes covered in a cinnamon sugar

How to Store and Freeze Baked Pumpkin Doughnuts

Store them bare, with no cinnamon sugar on them, in an airtight container on the counter for 2 to 3 days. Sugar pulls moisture out of the crumb and turns into a damp, sticky film overnight (ask me how I know), so the coating is something you add right before they get eaten. Warm them for a few minutes in a 300°F oven or about 8 seconds in the microwave, then dunk and roll. The sugar sticks to a warm doughnut just as well on day three as it did on day one. One thing to skip: the refrigerator! Putting baked goods in the fridge stales them faster than the counter does.

For the freezer, cool them completely, freeze them uncoated on a sheet pan for an hour so they don’t clump, then move them to a freezer bag for up to 2 months. Reheat straight from frozen at 300°F for 6 to 8 minutes and coat them then. That’s what makes these a genuinely good make-ahead, and it’s something the fried version will never do.

Frequently Asked Questions

What can I use instead of pumpkin pie spice?

If you don’t have this, just mix your own. Use 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 3/4 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon ginger, 1/8 teaspoon allspice, and 1/8 teaspoon cloves, and skip the separate 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg since it’s already counted in that 3/4 teaspoon.

I don’t have ground ginger. Does it matter?

Not much. Leave it out and add another 1/8 teaspoon of cinnamon in its place. If you have ginger paste, 1 1/2 teaspoons works nicely, though you’ll want to whisk it into the wet ingredients so it disperses instead of clumping into one very gingery doughnut hole. Be careful not to make up the difference with extra cloves or allspice, because both go medicinal fast.

Can I bake these in a regular muffin pan?

You can, and you’ll get about 12 pumpkin muffins. They’re good, but the balance changes, since a lot of the doughnut character lives in that high ratio of buttery cinnamon sugar crust to soft middle. Bake regular-size ones for 18 to 20 minutes.

Why did mine come out dense?

Almost always overmixing, and occasionally too much flour from scooping the measuring cup straight into the bag. One thing that isn’t the cause: butter seizing into little flecks when it hits the cold pumpkin. That looks alarming in the bowl and bakes out fine.

Can I make the batter ahead?

It’s better not to. The baking powder starts working the moment the wet and dry meet, so batter that sits bakes up flatter. The batter takes about 10 minutes to put together, so it’s an easy thing to do in the morning.

Do I have to dunk them in butter?

You can brush the butter on instead, and it works fine, though the coating goes on thinner and patchier. The full dunk is what gives you that even, sandy shell. It also uses less butter than you’d think, since most of what’s in the bowl at the end goes back in the fridge.

These are very good with a cup of coffee, and if you want to go all the way with it, my homemade pumpkin spice coffee creamer is a natural companion for a fall morning. I also think they taste wonderful with a little apple butter.

If you make these, come tell me how they turned out, and whether you went with the buttermilk version or raided your sourdough discard jar.

Happy baking!

Love,
Jennifer

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