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
Kari, these are fantastic. I actually did use almond meal since I didn’t have blanched almond flour, and still loved them. Instead if making the glaze I added the juice and zest of 1/2 lemon to the batter, then drizzled a bit of honey on the baked doughnut. Thank you for the great recipe!
I’m so glad you enjoyed them, and I love the idea of adding lemon into this recipe, lemon is one of my favorite flavors with sweets!
How do you store these? Just made and love. Thanks
I store mine in a sealed container in the freezer, then reheat gently at 250ºF. The glaze won’t look the same, so you can always freeze them unglazed as well.
I love these and have made several times. So yummy, yet for some reason last time I made them they were dry. I live in high altitude zone. Could this be a reason? I’d love to be able to get them a little more moist because they are delicious and healthier choice to doughnuts.
Thanks!
I’m not sure what would have happened if you’ve made them before without problems, but a couple things it could be is your oven might not be accurate anymore and they got over baked. Another thing I’ve had happen is different batches of tapioca seem to work slightly different so maybe that was it? Also like you mentioned altitude is always a factor in baking, but if you hadn’t had problems with the previous batches, you wouldn’t think that was the problem. The first thing I’d look at is baking them just a tad less next time!
My 3 y/o son has an egg allergy and he loves doughnuts. What can I substitute the egg with?
I haven’t tried it myself, but maybe you could use a ‘flax egg’ or chia egg’ in place of the egg. There’s also vegan egg alternatives in the health food stores these days, but I haven’t personally tried them. For ratios on the flax or chia eggs, just Google it and the answer will come right up. I’d link you to something, but not having tried it I wouldn’t want to steer you in the wrong direction. I hope you’ll let me know what you end up trying and how it goes!
VeganEggs should work perfectly. But I used half of an “egg” – their recipe calls for 1/2 C water to make one egg, which is ‘way more liquid volume than what one egg makes; so I halve the mix and use 1/4C water instead. Blend and let it set for a few minutes before folding it in with the other recipe ingredients.
Thank you so much Valerie for your tips, I really appreciate it since I don’t have any personal experience with vegan eggs! 🙂
Is the batter/dough supposed to be more of a runny consistency or more like an actual dough?
It’s definitely not a runny consistency, but not as thick as a cookie dough. It should look exactly like the picture in the blog post, which I really hope helps!
Do you think coconut oil would work in place of butter?
Coconut oil generally works well in place of butter, although they will probably have a lightly coconut flavor. I haven’t tried this one out with coconut oil though, so you’ll have to let me know how it goes!
OMG!! Sooo good!! These doughnuts are fantastic and have made my night!!
I’m so glad to hear you enjoyed them! 🙂
These are amazing! I have made them several times as muffins since I don’t have a doughnut pan and my whole family LOVES them. Even without the glaze!! Hopefully one day soon we will have a doughnut pan to enjoy them as intended but until then we will enjoy them any way we can.
I’m so glad you’ve been enjoying them, and I’m sure they taste the same as muffins!
I just made these the other day and they are SOOOOO good. Definitely a keeper and I’ll be browsing the rest of your recipes now. Thanks!!
So glad you enjoyed them, and I sure hope you find some more inspiration while browsing! 🙂
Looks yummy! Do you know the Calorie, Fat, & Carb counts?
Thank you! I don’t know the calorie/fat/carb count, but you can find out with an online recipe calculator. I’ll leave you a link to one below, and I hope you’ll let me know if you make these, or if you have anymore questions!
https://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp
Hi Kari,
So I’ve made these twice and they are a BIG hit with both my dietary-restricted friends/ co-workers, and with my no-restrictions friends/co-workers… and everyone LOVES them. They are so good… but I think these are mini-cakes disguised as doughnuts! Can’t wait to try the other doughnut recipes, etc, on your site! Thanks so much for sharing. Especially for my SIBO-diet friend.
Thanks so much, I’m so glad to hear you’ve been enjoying these as they’re one of my favorites!