Last Minute Baking? Christmas Wreath Donuts

Is anyone else feeling a funk? A holiday ennui? Is it brought on by so much travel late in the year? Or just…getting older?

I’m trying to get back in the spirit of things, the tradition. The memories of What It Used to Be. So I’m baking. But royal icing seemed too fussy. My cold hands felt like all thumbs. So I thought donuts, plump and fluffy and warm. I added some buttercream, some dye. Some pearls for good measure. And here we are - little wreaths for your Christmas morning.

Christmas Wreath Donuts

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup AP flour

  • 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed

  • 1 teaspoon baking powder

  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

  • 3 TB butter, melted (or olive oil!)

  • 1 egg + 1 yolk

  • 1/3 cup whole or buttermilk

  • 2 teaspoon vanilla extract

  • 1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Directions:

  1. Spray or grease your donut pan with oil

  2. Preheat oven to 350*F

  3. Sift together all dry ingredients

  4. Whisk together all wet ingredients

  5. With a rubber spatula, mix wet into dry

  6. Pipe (or spoon) mixture into prepared pan to about 3/4 way full

  7. Bang slightly on counter to get air bubbles out

  8. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown on top

  9. Allow to cool, remove from pan, see below for decoration notes

Decoration notes: I used a “ruffled” piping tip and dotted each donut to create a fir effect. For the buttercream, I used 6 TB unsalted butter, softened, 4 TB shortening, 1/2 TB vanilla, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 2 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar. I used a good gel kelly green dye and mixed this in by hand (I wanted a bit of striation on the dye for a more visual variety than the homogenous mixture done by a stand mixer)

I added white sugar pearls as baubles to finish.