Foodie Friday Pumpkin Spice Cake Donut

I have a confession, this is a bit of a cheater recipe, but hey we all need a cheater recipe every now and then, right?

Here is what you need:

• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 cup egg white
• 1/2 cup apple cider
• 1 box spice cake mix

 

This is really a super easy recipe. I took the cake mix box and just made a few adjustments. I knew you could use apple sauce in place of oil so I figured why not use pumpkin?? I did a quick internet search to validate my hypothesis and I was in luck!! According to the internet you can in fact substitute pumpkin for oil, good to know.

The box calls for 3 eggs, but I only had 2. Then I noticed an * on the bottom of the box and a web address to make the cake “cholesterol free”, and for this particular mix it said to use 5 egg whites, which according to my carton was about a cup. Woo hoo my donuts were saved, and I cut even more fat from the recipe!

The box also called for 1 cup of water, but since I wanted my donuts to be a little denser/ drier then a cake to make them more donut like so I cut the liquid in half. I also couldn’t decide if I wanted to make apple cider donuts or pumpkin so I figured I’d just combine them and subbed apple cider for the water.

You just mix all the ingredients together and pour the batter into a donut pan. They run around $10 and you can get them at most hobby stores, and there are usually 40%-50% off coupons for these stores floating around so you can get them for $5-$6. I would suggest getting 2 so that you can bake a dozen donuts at once. If you want your donuts to look more donut like only fill your pan about half way, not like the photo above. ;) Then you simply bake according to the boxes directions for cupcakes. For this particular brand it was 350* for 15-20 minutes.

This is what they look like when you fill the pan a little too full. They still tasted great! But looked more like a bagel then a donut.

This is what they look like when you only fill the pan half full.

This round I was able to make 16 donuts, but if I had filled all the pans only halfway I am sure it would have been closer to 2 dozen.

I was trying to keep these on the healthier side so I opted to not ice them. I think next time I will try a caramel cream cheese icing. So look for a recipe retake sometime next month.

Since next Friday will be the start of a new month I will be starting a new theme!! My theme for November is going to be fall baking, and up first is an apple crisp, because it just isn’t fall without one.