These simple to make gluten free Vanilla Bean Glazed Honey Cake Doughnuts are the perfect special occasion or weekend breakfast! They’re perfect moist, made with almond flour, and they’re gluten free and dairy free too. The glaze is made with coconut butter making these a refined sugar free treat. The vanilla bean combined with the hint of honey flavor makes these doughnuts something to look forward to!
It’s no secret that I’m a huge chocolate fan. It would seem that the chocolate fanaticism is genetically passed down in my family. (Just kidding… but seriously!) But weirdly enough I’m an equally enthusiastic fan of anything vanilla.
There’s nothing quite like a buttery-tender cake heavily scented with vanilla. And when you pair that with a cup of coffee, you’ve got my favorite indulgence. The relationship between vanilla and coffee is well documented, (affogato anyone) and for me it even outweighs the coffee/chocolate combo.
These doughnuts are a combo of two favorite recipes. The first inspiration is the most amazing vanilla cake from the former Editor in Chief of Gourmet Magazine, Ruth Reichl. It’s called Nicky’s Vanilla Cake. You can find it in her book, Garlic and Sapphires, (her books are great if you’re crazy about food)!
My second inspiration comes from memories of my favorite doughnut as a child, the Old Fashioned Glazed. I combined the vanilla cake flavors that I remember, into a simple baked doughnut. And now we can all enjoy these beauties on slow weekend mornings!
Now let’s jump in and make these Vanilla Bean Glazed Honey Cake Doughnuts step by step!
This recipe is really simple and doesn’t require a mixer. Simply whisk together the dry ingredients, mix them together with the wet ingredients, and you’re ready to bake.
You can make these with coconut oil for a dairy free option or use avocado oil. But butter definitely has the edge for flavor!
Spoon the batter evenly into a doughnut pan. There might be a little leftover that you can bake in a muffin tin. Or a second doughnut pan works too if you have one. Finally, smooth out the tops of the doughnuts a bit with the back of the spoon before baking them.
Even though it’s really hard to wait, these need to cool until they’re barely warm. Then you turn the pan upside down to release them onto a cooling rack to finish cooling to room temperature. If you try and get them out sooner, you run the risk of breaking 1 or 2.
Once they’ve cooled, you’re ready to glaze them. I started off all neat and tidy by spooning the glaze over them. But in the end I dunked each one into the glaze before carefully removing them (cake doughnuts are fragile) just to speed things up a bit. I ended up with a few crumbs in the glaze. But I felt like it was a pretty small price to pay considering it saved me a ton of time!
As I mentioned before, these are really good with coffee. My sister stopped by just in time, and ended up with a freshly baked doughnut. Which of course we paired with an Americano in her to-go cup!
And now for an up close view of the pound cake-like texture of these doughnuts because seeing is believing. I wouldn’t blame you for a moment if you were a bit skeptical about gluten free doughnuts. But these will definitely change your mind in just bite!
I sure hope you enjoy these Vanilla Bean Glazed Honey Cake Doughnuts. And if you do please leave me a comment/rating below. I always love hearing from you here! And if you’re looking for more doughnuts, try my Double Chocolate Cake Doughnuts or my Strawberry Cake Doughnuts.
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Vanilla Bean Glazed Honey Cake Doughnuts
- Total Time: 25 mins
- Yield: 6 doughnuts + a few small doughnut holes 1x
- Diet: Gluten Free
Description
These simple to make gluten free Vanilla Bean Glazed Honey Cake Doughnuts are the perfect special occasion or weekend breakfast! They’re perfect moist, made with almond flour, and they’re gluten free and dairy free too. The glaze is made with coconut butter making these a refined sugar free treat. The vanilla bean combined with the hint of honey flavor makes these doughnuts something to look forward too again and again!
Ingredients
Doughnuts:
1 3/4 cups almond flour
1/4 cup tapioca starch/flour
1 Teaspoon baking powder
pinch of sea salt
1/4 cup honey
4 Tablespoons salted butter, melted
1 egg
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
Glaze:
1/4 cup coconut butter, also called mana
1/2 vanilla bean, seeds scraped out
2 Tablespoons honey
pinch of sea salt
1–2 Teaspoons lemon juice
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350ºF and lightly grease a non-stick doughnut pan for 6 doughnuts.
Whisk together the almond flour, tapioca starch, baking powder, and sea salt.
Melt the honey and butter together, set aside to cool before whisking in the egg and vanilla extract.
Mix the honey mixture into the almond flour mixture until combined and there are no lumps.
Divide the batter evenly between the 6 doughnut spots, filling each one about 3/4 of the way full. The batter is quite thick, and I used 2 spoons to spread it around. I had a little leftover batter, and made ‘doughnut holes’ by baking the remaining batter in a mini muffin tin.
Bake for 7-10 minutes or until puffy and no longer gooey in the center. You can check the doneness by inserting a toothpick in the center, when it comes out clean or with moist crumbs, the doughnuts are done.
Let the doughnuts cool for at least 20 minutes before removing them from the pan to cool to room temperature on a cooling rack.
Make the glaze by melting everything together over low heat just until liquified.
You can either dip the doughnuts into the glaze (carefully, cake doughnuts break easily) or you can spoon the glaze evenly over each doughnut.
Notes
The glaze for these doughnuts is sweet like a normal frosting which makes these great with a cup of coffee. However if you like things on the less sweet side feel free to play around with the glaze.
- Prep Time: 15 mins
- Cook Time: 10 mins
- Category: Breakfast
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Can you substitute coconut sugar for honey? Also, do you think the batter would work for cupcakes? Thanks!
I think coconut sugar would work, although there’s not quite as much liquid in coconut sugar, so I can’t be sure of what the consistency of the finished doughnut would be. I definitely wouldn’t try using this batter for cupcakes because it’s much too dense, it’s more of the heaviness of an old fashioned glazed cake doughnut which doesn’t work well for cupcakes. I hope you enjoy these, and be sure to let me know how it goes, or if you have anymore questions!
What can I use to substitute the first 2 ingredients: almond flour and tapioca starch? How much regular all purpose flour?
Usually all purpose flour doesn’t substitute equally for almond flour and tapioca starch. I’m not sure how to substitute all purpose flour for this recipe because it was formulated for almond flour which has a lot more naturally occurring fat in it, and creates a moister finished product. If you did sub in regular flour, you would also need to increase the amount of butter and possibly the honey as well, (almond flour has a residual sweetness to it). I’m sorry I can’t give you exact measurements, but you might be able to do a Google search for a baked cake doughnut with all purpose flour.
Great recipe! I’ve made these three times, each time using Rice Malt Syrup instead of honey.
That’s great to know, I have some rice malt syrup that I haven’t really experimented with yet! 🙂
These look great! Is there anything you could use instead of the coconut butter? Also, could you use vanilla extract rather than the bean?
I’m not sure what else you could use besides coconut butter except regular powdered sugar made into a glaze? You can use vanilla extract instead of the bean, but it won’t be quite as intense of a vanilla flavor. I hope you enjoy the recipe, and be sure to let me know if you have anymore questions!
These look amazing and I just bought a full-sized silicone donut pan. Can you tell me if you used a regular or mini-sized donut pan for this recipe? I really want to make them tomorrow, but don’t know if I should double the recipe. Thank you!
I’m not sure if mine is regular or mini, so I measured it. The there are 6 slots in the pan for doughnuts and they each measure about 3″ across. I think that’s considered a regular sized doughnut pan, but I wanted to send you the measurements just to be sure! I hope you’ll let me know how it goes and if you have anymore questions!
I made my first batch of these donuts yesterday morning and was amazed…they are so good! Can’t wait to make more this coming weekend. I love your recipes, your blog, and especially your photography…thanks for sharing your talents!
Thanks so much Sonya for making my day! 🙂 I’m so glad you enjoyed these, they’re one of my favorites for the weekend too!
Yum these look so good; guess I need to get out my doughnut pan!
I hope you do, you won’t regret one of these on a leisurely weekend morning!
There is no way I would be able to tell that these donuts are healthy! These are absolutely gorgeous and perfect in everyday possible!
I love it when you can’t even tell a healthy indulgence is healthy!
I am completely blown away by this recipe…by these donuts. Not only are they gorgeous – that close-up is making me weak in the knees – but they’re as healthy as donuts come… Wonderful!
I hope you get to try them, I couldn’t believe how good they were because it seems almost impossible for healthy doughnuts!
I honestly think we must share taste buds because I’m always on YOUR page when it comes to food. Your vanilla bean recipes are some of the best I’ve seen anywhere. I adore your vanilla bean recipes (plus the ones you include pom arils in!!!!) I need to tweet this if I can figure it out. Ha. Vanilla bean makes me weak in the knees, but yes, I see you understand chocolate as well.
I hope you get to make these soon, I know how much you love vanilla bean and this doughnut glaze will be right up your alley!