Desserts · Doughnuts

Baked cinnamon sugar doughnuts

Name: Baked cinnamon sugar doughnuts
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 27 min
Yield: 12 servings
Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour; 2/3 cup granulated sugar; 3/4 cup whole milk; 1 egg; 4 tbsp butter, melted; 2 tsp baking powder; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 1/4 tsp salt; 2 tbsp butter, melted; 3 tbsp granulated sugar; 2 tsp ground cinnamon

Cake doughnuts from a tin rather than a pan of hot oil: fifteen minutes of work, no thermometer, and a kitchen that still smells fine afterwards. Baked, they are lighter than fried — though a doughnut is still a doughnut, and this one says so.

Time: 27 min (15 prep + 12 cook)
Servings: 12
Per serving: 195 kcal
Protein: 4 g

Ingredients

Doughnuts

2 cups all-purpose flour240 g
2/3 cup granulated sugar120 g
3/4 cup whole milk180 g
1 egg50 g
4 tbsp butter, melted60 g
2 tsp baking powder8 g
1 tsp vanilla extract5 g
1/4 tsp salt2 g

Cinnamon sugar

2 tbsp butter, melted30 g
3 tbsp granulated sugar40 g
2 tsp ground cinnamon6 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Heat the oven to 190°C (375°F) and butter a 12-hole doughnut tin well, ring moulds included.
Whisk the dry ingredients, then the wet, then combine with as few strokes as it takes. Cake doughnuts go rubbery if you beat them.
Pipe or spoon the batter into the moulds, filling each about two-thirds — overfilled rings bake over the hole and lose the shape.
Bake 10–12 minutes until springy and just barely golden. They should not brown much.
Cool 5 minutes, then brush each with melted butter and turn it in the cinnamon sugar while still warm, so it sticks.

No doughnut tin?

A muffin tin with a ball of foil greased and stood in the centre of each hole makes a passable ring. The bake time is the same.

Are baked doughnuts really better than fried?

Meaningfully, yes — frying adds roughly 5–7 g of fat per doughnut, and this batter never meets the oil. It is a real difference, not a big enough one to make it a health food.

Why this score

engineered against fullness

Concentrated sugar, with little protein or fiber to slow it down; dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

8% of kcal

29% water

4 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

38%

16%

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 2336 kcal goes into the pot, 741 g of ingredients comes out as ~690 g of food → 339 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 339
Protein: (8%); 6 g
Fat: (33%); 13 g
Carbohydrates: (59%); 51 g
of which sugar: 25 g
Fiber: 1 g
Sodium: 309 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

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Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.