BEST Fried Chocolate Cake Donuts — AT HOME

(this post contains affiliate links)

Anyone who sets out to develop a chocolate dessert recipe knows they’re in for potential 💩 outcomes.

Even after other chocolate recipe trials, I wasn’t quite prepared for the literal emoji I was about to make…

I love cake donuts. But I don’t talk about them much—I don’t like to remind myself that most places around the US lack a great, or even good, option for quality cake donuts.

These donuts generally require a cake donut dropper, AKA an extra, expensive piece of equipment. For this reason, many good shops either go full into cake style donuts or opt out of them altogether, preferring old fashioned donuts (a very tasty cousin to cake donuts) which get punched out like raised donuts.

“What about Dunkin?” Yeah. Okay. Fine. I will obviously get their chocolate cake donut when presented with the option BUT it’s not my dream cake donut. My dream cake donut is dead, apparently, which I only learned while writing this.

So outside of reincarnating Underwest Donuts and flying to NYC every other weekend, the only true solution to my cake-donut craving was to create a recipe at home that was soft and sweet with a dense and rich chocolate flavor using my memory of Underwest’s cake donuts as my North Star.

Now I had a theory for tackling this recipe sans donut dropper: take a chocolate cake recipe, reduce the liquid to make it thick enough to pipe, and then treat it like a French Cruller batter and pipe it onto greased squares of parchment.

Then, as they say, sh*t happened (see photo above in case you forgot). Suddenly, this idea for an at-home cake donut recipe wasn’t looking too promising.

Determined to make it work after that epic failure, I looked to the internet for some guidance. It pointed me in a good direction. In conjunction with a browse through Top Pot’s Donut cookbook, I moved in the right direction—away from additional acid and toward the creaming method.

My idea to pipe the batter worked wonderfully, once I got the actual recipe right. And the “right” recipe exceeding my expectations—I was effectively eating the donut I missed so much from Underwest.

I freely admit it’s a bit fussy with the piping bit BUT very worth the effort. Plus you probably don’t need to track down much special equipment to make this donut—piping tip? parchment? Donut time!

I’d suggest stocking up on some quality cocoa powder to create a rich and complexly flavored donut—my first two trials were with a store-brand cocoa and the Valrhona I used in the third trial BLEW ME AWAY in comparison. Lastly, topping this donut with a ganache made with similarly high quality chocolate will send it to another dimension of good, I promise.

Let’s get down to it!

The BEST Fried Chocolate Cake Donuts

From Orlandough By Liz Doerr

Special thanks to Olive Nation for providing the quality chocolate products that put this recipe in the “dangerously good” zone.

Yield: ~20 donuts**

**I’ve tried this recipe as a quarter batch and it works great. If you’re looking to make a small batch of these donuts, simply cut everything to 25% and your yield will be about 5 donuts—perfect for 2-4 people!

Special equipment you’ll need: (my faves linked below)

• Stand Mixer or Hand Mixer (I used the latter)

• Kitchen Scale

• Wilton 1A piping tip

  • ideally-you could attempt without and get similar results but shoot for a similarly sized opening to this tip with your piping bag

• Piping Bag

• Chopsticks for flipping donuts

• 4 inch deep pan to fry in

• Instant read thermometer

• Kitchen Spider to get donuts out of the oil

• Parchment paper

Ingredients:

Donuts: Chocolate Cake Donuts

• 400 g King Arthur All Purpose Flour (about 3 heaping cups)

• 80 g Valrhona Cocoa Powder (2/3 cup)

• 1 tsp Baking Powder

• 1 tsp Salt

• 200 g Granulated Sugar (1 cup)

• 75 g Room-Temp Butter (5 and 1/3 tbls AKA 1/3 cup)

• 2 tsp Vanilla Extract

• 4 Large Egg Yolks

• 400 g Whole Milk (1 and 2/3 cup)

• 1 recipe Chocolate Ganache

• Spray oil (I used coconut) or additional butter, melted (for parchment/piping donuts)

• Oil safe for frying (1 quart should be enough, I use Corn Oil)

  • The amount of oil you need will depend on the size of pan you’re using. I use pure corn oil . Canola is a good option too. But check your oil’s smoke point before you purchase. You want it to be about 425-450 F just to be safe

Method:

1. Sift (don’t skip—cocoa powder or baking powder clumps are no fun to bite into) and whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

2. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and pale. This will take a few minutes—usually about 2-3 but keep an eye on it—use the indication of light and pale as a reference point for when to stop.
   

3. Add the egg yolks into the creamed mixture, one at a time. Mix after each addition until all yellow streaks are gone before adding the next egg yolk. Once all the eggs are added, mix in the vanilla extract.
   

4. Add dry ingredients and milk to the butter-egg mix. Combine on low until fully incorporated. Set aside for a minute while you prepare your piping bag, parchment paper, and frying station—this will get the flour in the batter time to hydrate and therefore the batter will thicken a bit.
   

5. Place your piping tip in a piping bag. Cut parchment into 6x6 squares and spray with oil spray or brush with melted butter. Set you pot on the stove and add 2 inches of oil—preheat to 350F.
   

6. Add batter to your piping bag and pipe a double circle of batter (one circle on top the other—just go around twice, allowing a little overlap is okay). Be sure to shoot for a wider hole in the center than you think. Example picture of the finished result of this step below!
   

7. Fry the donuts: Temp your oil—if you’re at 350F you’re ready to fry. Grab one donut by the parchment paper it’s on. Gently, invert the parchment and give it a sec to allow the donut to pull away from the paper—I flipped it over and let go of the paper, allowing the parchment to rest on top of the oil and then fished it out with my chopsticks which is messy but it worked. Fry for 1 minute per side. Repeat with remaining donuts.
   

8. Allow the donuts to cool slightly (give ‘em 10 minutes) then dip them in chocolate ganache (recipe below) or vanilla glaze (find that recipe here way down towards the end). I finished mine with dark chocolate crunchy pearls which you can find here (I love the Crunch-bar element they add to the overall texture experience)

Even the successful recipe a 💩 element to it 😅

Additional Recipes:

• Ganache: Valrhona Dark Chocolate Ganache

  • 100 g Valrhona Dark Chocolate

  • 100 g Heavy Cream

  • 1/8 tsp neutral oil

    • In a microwave safe bowl, heat your heavy cream on high for 1 min. Add chocolate and allow to rest undisturbed for one minute. The chocolate should be perfectly melty at this point, stir until you have a silky, shiny ganache. It may seem thin when you start stirring but it will thicken up a lot as its homogenized. Add in 1/8 tsp oil (this helps it set up on the donuts).

    • As the ganache cools to room temp, it will thicken—dipping in a thick ganache results in too much ganache on the donut. Be sure it’s warm when you begin dipping donuts in it.

Resources: Links to my preferred items!

Ingredients

King Arthur All Purpose Flour (full disclosure this is DEFINITELY cheaper at Publix or Costco)

Pink Himalayan Salt (I know people prefer kosher but this is what I’m used to and what I’ve tested this recipe with. Keep in mind some salts are saltier than others—sounds weird, doesn’t it?)

Mazola Corn Oil

Resources

Olive Nation’s website is full of SO MANY fun, unique, and useful baking supplies. Be sure to browse!

Hit me up on Instagram with any questions I’m happy to help out with any questions you have about donuts and/or this recipe. Just shoot me a DM!

Kitchen Tools

Thermometer (this is the one I use, but this one is also preferred by a lot of cooks)

Bench Scraper (this one has inch measurements on it which are great for donut letters (class coming soon!))

Bowl Scraper (set of two) (two seems like too many but these work so much better than spatulas for getting dough out of bowls and you might just get addicted to using them and need both…)

Lodge Cast Iron Pan with LID (love a lid, helps speed up the oil heating imo—not backed by any evidence just me thinking it—and also nice to have so once you’re done frying you can cover it up and curb the oil smell a bit)

Lodge Cast Iron Pan (no lid)