Most everyone loves doughnuts, though we don’t all agree on what constitutes the best. Glazed, filled, or cake doughnuts are the most common, but there are other options. Let’s face it, it’s not just about how you prefer your sweets. Some of us would rather indulge in savory flavors with just a hint of sweet. From crazy toppings to unique ingredients to unthinkable combinations, we’ve gathered ten recipes sure to intrigue your taste buds.
Let’s start with the sweet. As if doughnuts aren’t sweet enough on their own, let’s see how much sweeter we can make them by combining them with other treats.
Doughnut Ice Cream Cones
That’s right! Serve up some deliciously cold ice cream in a nice warm cone-shaped doughnut! If you’ve ever made any kind of homemade dough, you know how long it takes to let it rise, knead it and roll it out. After that, these are really simple. Wrap the dough around a cone shape, bake, and then top as desired.
Cinnamon Sugar Grilled Donuts
There’s always room on the grill, right? What’s a little different about these doughnuts is that they are made with buttermilk biscuit ready-dough. Then, instead of deep frying them, grill ’em.
While we’re focusing on the sweet side, let’s look at a couple of drinks that can be made with doughnuts, or are at least doughnut-themed.
Chocolate Donut Milkshake
This fun drink for kids is easy. Take some old chocolate doughnuts, ice cream, milk, and topping syrup (e.g. chocolate fudge) and blend them all together. Viola! Drinkable doughnuts.
Doughnut Moonshine
Milkshakes are good for the kids, but what about the grownups? If you enjoy a drink every now and then, try combining the flavor with the sweet flavor of a glazed doughnut. Although this recipe does not call for you to use a doughnut in it, it makes use of similar ingredients to give it that classic doughnut taste.
Now, here are some other things you can do with your doughnuts.
Elvis Donut
I don’t know if Elvis loved bananas, but he certainly had an affinity for bacon. This recipe calls for sandwiching banana doughnuts with a peanut butter cream and topping with a sugar glaze and candied bacon.
Doughnut Chips
Do you have leftover doughnuts? If you don’t want to blend them into doughnut milkshakes, then try cutting them in half and cooking them on a panini press. Let them crisp as they dry and you have something akin to chips. Along with this recipe are the recipes for three dipping sauces designed specifically for doughnut chips. You can try the maple-cinnamon caramel sauce, the raspberry coulis, the coffee-cream sauce, or alternate between all three.
Donut Sliders
This recipe from Food Network provides all the ingredients and directions to make the doughnuts, hamburger patties, and glaze from scratch. If you’re not feeling that ambitious, just buy the doughnuts and cook some patties. You basically just use the doughnut in place of a hamburger bun. This recipe suggests using mayonnaise as the main condiment and after putting it all together, drizzle it with some glaze.
“Loaded” Barbecue Sweet Potato Donuts
For this recipe, you start by making sweet potato doughnuts. Cut them in half, and put pulled pork and BBQ sauce on top. Then, drizzle with sour cream and sprinkle with green onions.
By the way, if BBQ doughnuts sound like your kind of thing, then you’ve got to check out Gourdough’s in Austin Texas. This restaurant offers some of the most unique in doughnut sandwich options, including their version of the BBQ doughnut, the Boss Hog.
The next couple of recipes don’t really use doughnuts in them. But, if they don’t use doughnuts, then how are they considered doughnut recipes? Well, they make use of the awesome doughnut shape. They’re like doughnuts without the dough.
Macaroni & Cheese Donuts
For many kids, this may just be the best of two worlds. You don’t need to tell them it’s not really a doughnut. Just take some mac & cheese and fry it up (be sure to follow the recipe directions for it to come out right) ring-shaped for a fun finger food.
Carbonara Doughnuts
Yes, it’s another pasta dish. This time Rachael Ray shares her recipe for Carbonara, doughnut-style. Similar to the Macaroni & Cheese Donuts, you make and chill the pasta first. Then, bake it in a doughnut pan until it’s nice and crisp.
Let us know which recipes you’ve tried, or if you have one you want to share!