Baked Apple Cider Donut Holes

Donuts. Apple and cinnamon. Baked. Ah, that was the word.  Baked. No hot oil. Oh yeah. I can do this!

I've saved a few donut recipes the past couple of years because the photos looked so yummy. But then I read through the recipe and I'm reminded, oh yeah, you need to use a great big Dutch oven of hot oil. I have a fear of hot scalding oil.  Oil so hot it could burn a house down. And that's my true fear-fire. I don't really know where this fear came from, and maybe it's just fear of the unknown, but fear it I do. Shake in my boots (well, flip flops anyway) FEAR. I don't even own an outdoor grill. I'm perfectly fine with other people grilling as long as I don't have to watch, but I'm not gonna do it.

But baked donuts.....Bring. It. On.

This recipe is from Sally's Baking Addiction and can be found HERE.

This is the perfect fall treat.  I don't have a donut pan but I do have a mini muffin pan so I made the donut hole version but I imagine this recipe in donut form would be just as magical.

The first thing you want to do is simmer the cider with a couple of cinnamon sticks and an orange cut into halves. This is done to enhance the flavor of the cider. And it made the kitchen smell a-mazing!

So you mix all your basic baking ingredients together and scoop the batter into the muffin pan.  I used a cookie scoop so my muffins would be similar in size.

This is what mine looked like after being baked. I popped them out of the pan and onto their sides to cool a bit. They were too hot to handle to dip in the butter and roll in the sugar/cinnamon goodness and what kind of donut doesn't need some of that kind of goodness!  Because I kept the batter scoop fairly small, the donuts didn't rise over the well and give my donuts a muffin top.   I guess then they'd just be muffins. Hmmm.  They'd still taste the same, but 'donuts' is just a happier word than 'muffin', don't ya think!

Only the tops of the donuts were dipped in melted butter but the entire donut was rolled around in the cinnamon sugar mixture. 

Here they are all lined up like good little soldiers. For me, the recipe made 44 donut holes. So how did they taste?  They were ... Decent. I thought they were a little dry. I had very high hopes for these little nuggets and while they were good, they didn't blow me away. I'm not giving up on them though. I think with just a little tinkering they could be the apple cider donuts of my dreams!

Thanks for stopping by-