I should have called these “Gluten Free Fried Doughnuts that Aren’t Gross,” because that kind of sums it up. I’ve made a lot of gross gluten free fried doughnuts.
These are different.
Last week I had no yeast, so I tried doughnuts with baking powder. Can I say POINTLESS? If I’m gonna fry the suckers, they might as well be the real deal.
I’ve heard about baking doughnuts. I have, really. They look perfectly good baked.
But the whole IDEA of a doughnut is to fry it. In oil. Then sprinkle it with sugar. That way it’s as unhealthy as possible.
I feel very strongly about this.
I was amazed at how quickly they cooked. Last time I made doughnuts I had to stick them in the oven for a while to cook all the way through. Not so with these. They fried for five minutes and they were done. Perfectly soft on the inside. Slightly crunchy crust on the outside.
Oh yes.
The gluten free fried doughnuts of my dreams.
Not to mention pretty stinking quick to make.
I’m all about eliminating unnecessary work. These take only thirty minutes to rise, 20 minutes to cook. The dough can be thrown together in about fifteen minutes.
You could be eating one of these in just over an hour. Half of that time you could be sitting reading your favorite magazine, waiting for the doughnuts to rise and dreaming of the goodness you will soon devour.
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
One last thing I have to say about this doughnut batter: One day, with a few adaptions, it shall be olle bollen.
If you don’t know what olle bollen is, I’ll translate: Olle bollen means “oil balls” in Dutch. They’re a tradition, and my Mom used to make them before we started eating gluten free. They might sound unhealthy, and they are. But SO amazing. Stuffed with raisins and apples. That nice oil-fried skin.
I could go on.
No one is more excited about the olle bollen potential than my older sister. But I’m also pretty excited. You should be too.
For now, make these gluten free fried doughnuts.
- 3 eggs
- 1 tablespoon yeast
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- ¾ cup warm water
- 1 teaspoon molasses (adds a malty “wheat” flavor)
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 2 cups cornstarch (tapioca starch works as well)
- 1 cup rice flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons guar gum
- Pinch salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- Put the yeast, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and ¾ cup of warm water into a bowl and stir it up with a fork. Put the bowl in a warm place. I always put it in the oven on WARM for about three minutes and then turn the oven off and let it sit in there. Allow the yeast to rise for at least five minutes.
- In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, molasses, vanilla extract, maple syrup, vinegar, and olive oil.
- Add the yeast mix to the egg/olive oil/ molasses mix. Beat until fully blended, then add the cornstarch, rice flour, guar gum, salt, and cinnamon. Beat for two minutes.
- Take a look at the dough. It should be thick but not dry looking. I’ve included a picture here to help you. The mix is perfect if it’s got a smooth, not stiff look. If it looks a little bit stiff or dry, add more warm water and blend, adding it a tablespoon at a time. Your dough should DEFINITELY not be “knead-able.” This means it will be a little bit difficult to work with later on, but you NEED that moisture. Bear with me here.
- So, after you’ve gotten it to about the right texture (see pictures below for reference), blend for about two minutes to stretch it out a little bit. This is the gluten free version of kneading.
- Finally, you’re ready to make doughnuts.
- Put a sheet of wax paper onto your work surface and sprinkle it with cornstarch. Put a baking sheet nearby and put wax paper on that as well. Get out your tools: You’ll need a spatula, a cup with a top about 3” in diameter (really anything circular will work), and a teaspoon.
- Take about half of the doughnut batter and place this on the cornstarch. Coat your hands with cornstarch and flatten the dough out, using cornstarch as necessary. I don’t use a rolling pin at all. The dough is very soft and you only need to flatten it out to about ¾ of an inch thick.You don't need to knead it at all--be gentle (see pictures below for reference).
- Coat the edges of your cup in cornstarch and use it to make a circle of dough. Twist it around a little bit before lifting it up again (see pictures below for reference).
- Rub some cornstarch around inside of your teaspoon, then use the teaspoon to dig out the center of your doughnut (think ice cream scooper). Cover one of your fingers in cornstarch and twist it inside the doughnut center to make it nice and round inside (see pictures below for reference).
- Use the spatula to put the doughnut on the baking sheet. Repeat the above process with all of your doughnuts.
- Once you’ve got them all on the pan, put them in a warm place to rise for thirty minutes. I put mine in the oven on WARM for five minutes, then turned the oven off completely and just let them sit there (my WARM setting is a bit too hot, so the outside of the doughnuts start to cook if I leave it on).
- (See pictures below for reference).
- Once the doughnuts have risen, heat up some oil on medium high. I used a little cast iron pan and filled it up with about ½ to ¾ of an inch of oil on the bottom (see pictures below for reference).
- Pick your doughnut up on the spatula and slide it into the oil. After about two minutes you’ll see the edges turn a deep golden brown (see pictures below for reference).
- Flip it over (be careful not to splash oil onto the stove where it can drip onto your burner. That would be bad).
- Cook the other side of the doughnut until done, then pull it out of the pan and put it back on the wax paper. The wax paper won’t melt. You could also put them on top of some paper towels, though I found that the crust on the doughnuts was not super oily so I didn't need the paper towels to soak up excess oil.
- You can cook numerous doughnuts at once if your pan is big enough (and if you can keep up with all that flipping). The most my little pan fit was two.
- Cook all of the doughnuts. You don’t have to cook them any further in the oven—the interior will be cooked through.
- If you’re willing to wait until they are cool, toss them in a plastic baggie with powdered sugar and cinnamon.
- You can also coat these suckers with any kind of glaze you please. I’m sure it will be delicious.
how your dough should look. Note smooth texture and little stretched bubbles.
Coat your hands with cornstarch and flatten the dough out, using cornstarch as necessary. I don’t use a rolling pin at all. The dough is very soft and you only need to flatten it out to about ¾ of an inch thick.You don’t need to knead it at all–be gentle.
Coat the edges of your cup in cornstarch and use it to make a circle of dough. Twist it around a little bit before lifting it up again.
Rub some cornstarch around inside of your teaspoon, then use the teaspoon to dig out the center of your doughnut (think ice cream scooper). Cover one of your fingers in cornstarch and twist it inside the doughnut center to make it nice and round inside.
Use the spatula to put the doughnut on the baking sheet. Repeat the above process with all of your doughnuts.
My audience.
Once you’ve got them all on the pan, put them in a warm place to rise for thirty minutes. I put mine in the oven on WARM for five minutes, then turned the oven off completely and just let them sit there (my WARM setting is a bit too hot, so the outside of the doughnuts start to cook if I leave it on).
Nicely risen.
Once the doughnuts have risen, heat up some oil on medium high. I used a little cast iron pan and filled it up with about ½ to ¾ of an inch of oil on the bottom.
Pick your doughnut up on the spatula and slide it into the oil. After about two minutes you’ll see the edges turn a deep golden brown.
Almost there…
Flip it over (be careful not to splash oil onto the stove where it can drip onto your burner. That would be bad).
So nice to see this little golden face.
Cook the other side of the doughnut until done, then pull it out of the pan and put it back on the wax paper. The wax paper won’t melt. You could also put them on top of some paper towels, though I found that the crust on the doughnuts was not super oily so I didn’t need the paper towels to soak up excess oil.
I…er…needed to make sure this one was done inside. It was.
You can cook numerous doughnuts at once if your pan is big enough (and if you can keep up with all that flipping). The most my little pan fit was two.
Fry all of the doughnuts. You don’t have to cook them any further in the oven—the interior will be cooked through.
If you’re willing to wait until they are cool, toss them in a plastic baggie with powdered sugar and cinnamon.
You can also coat these gluten free fried doughnuts with any kind of glaze you please. I’m sure it will be delicious.
These look really awesome. My mom found the article about you (correct grammar?!?), in the Mary Jane’s magazine, a couple of days ago. I was so excited. I am 18, and I just found out I can’t handle gluten either. So sad, because I love to bake. But, I was/am determined that I am not going to be miserable for the rest of my life–I am going to find some good GF recipes. 😀 So, needless to say I have been excited about your recipes.
…however, (don’t we hate that word) I also can’t have eggs, and I have seen that many of your recipes have eggs in them. Sometimes, quite a few. So, I am wondering how these recipes would be without eggs??? I realize that you still feel like you are learning in many ways, and you are probably not sure. But, I was just wondering what you thought…and if you had any ideas on substitutes (or doing without). I have used chia to replace egg in a lot of my baking. Sometimes it has gone well…and other times….well…. 😀 Plus, I have read (and can believe from my limited experience) that you can’t really substitute it for more than two eggs. So…do you have any ideas on this? Hopefully you will…I would really like to try some of your recipes.
In the meantime, are there any of your recipes that use few or no eggs? Thanks in advance.
God Bless!
HonduranChikka, you’re certainly not the first person to ask me about egg free recipes! I recently compiled a list of naturally egg free recipes and recipes that can probably be substituted (note: I haven’t tried all of the substitutions). You can find that list here: http://www.imglutenfree.com/egg-free/
Also, while wandering pinterest the other day I found this article on egg substitutes: http://www.aroundmyfamilytable.com/2014/05/egg-free-substitutions/. I found it helpful and hopefully you will too.
Hi Linneae,
I shared this on Pinterest. Hope you dont mind. Its a good way of finding favourite recipes. My husband is gluten free and misses sweet things. This seems like a nice thing to bake on cold Sunday, although a lot of work and expensive (all those ingredients!) but good for a treat! Thanks for your recipes and blog!
best,
Michele
Michele, no worries on pinterest sharing. I personally LOVE pinterest and use it all the time! And, yes, these doughnuts are a lot of work but they certainly are a treat. 🙂
Hello Linnae i have a question for you,
Have you tried to freeze these? if not how long do these doughnuts stay “fresh” before they go stale?
I know wheat doughnuts can be freezed but can you freeze theses wheat free ones?
See my Aunite is coeliac and she lives quite a while away, the travel from where I live to her is 3-4 hours i know that doughnuts need really to be eaten on the day they are made for the best result. I cant make them down there because they kitchen is getting refitted so i want to make some to give her and i want her to enjoy them the best way. She told me she has’nt had a doughnut since she was diagnosed which was 9 years ago, she has tried to make wheat free doughnuts but her results have failed in the past which this really made me sad so I wanted to surprise her,
I’d be so grateful if you could help me, i do hope you dont mind the long comment.
Many thanks.
Scarlett
I have not tried to freeze them yet. I’d guess, though, that they’d probably keep for 3-4 hours if you stored them in an airtight container. Just don’t put them in the container until they’re completely cooled.
Aw first try at this recipe and i failed T_T
Oh no! I’m so sorry! If you could describe what went wrong I might be able to help fix the problem.
Aw its ok I think it was due to my fault but im going to try again I think the yeast didn’t rise because it was so cold here, they didn’t rise but I still tried one it was really nice still. I’ve tried gluten free recipes before and I never get them on my first try :D. I’m gonna try again and ill let you know how they turn out this time. oh also when cutting out the donuts out do to reform the offcuts to make more or not?
Yes, I always use the leftover shrapnel. The doughnuts they make aren’t quite as good, because the dough is just a bit tougher. But still good enough to eat. 🙂
Anyway, I hope this recipe works for you this time!
Hi there, can you deep fry these or oven bake them? Or is best to shallow fry?
🙂
Hey Juliana, sorry it took so long to reply.
I usually fry them in about half an inch of oil, but I’ve also made this recipe as olle bollen before (a New Year’s pastry that my Dutch family used to make all the time before we started eating gluten-free–the name translates to “Oil Balls”). When making olle bollen, you just drop the dough as balls into about 5 inches of boiling oil. I guess you’d call that deep frying. 🙂 Either way, the olle bollen turned out well, so I bet you could do the same with doughnuts!
I stumbled across your blog in my search for yeast-risen gluten-free doughnuts. That was over an hour ago. Since then, I have been reading just about everything on here! 🙂 May I say, kudos to you for an awesome site, and to your parents for raising such an awesome young lady! I was surprised to find out how young you are. Your hands gave it away, in the photos of the doughnut process. And that’s what started me reading, because I had to find out. LOL! (Not entirely strange, since I am an artist and have recently painted a well-worn hand. So I notice these things!)
I am a gluten-free grandma in North Carolina. Been gf for about 4 years now, and have tried NUMEROUS recipes; some, to great success and others, to failure. (Or we shall just call it the fruits of experimentation.) One thing I have not found is a good doughnut. I NEED a good doughnut! 🙂 I live only 50 miles or so from the birthplace of Krispy Kreme, and I miss them. Terribly, sometimes. I know that level of airy-ness cannot be replicated in a gf doughnut, but your recipe has given me hope and the strength to try again. 🙂 So I will. In the morning. I’d do it now, but Grandpa frowns on me frying in the kitchen at midnight. But he will gladly be tomorrow’s guinea pig.
I’ll let you know how they turn out. 🙂
Thank you so much for your comment, Lisa! I agree: doughnuts are as necessary as breathing.
Okay, I am reporting back! 🙂
I made two changes to the recipe: I did not add cinnamon and I used tapioca starch in place of the cornstarch because I had an abundance of tapioca starch. (I buy it as well as potato starch and rice flour at my local Asian market. So much cheaper… from 99 cents to $1.49 per pound for each of those!)
So, it was very humid here yesterday when I tried the recipe, and the dough was much thinner and more viscous that yours. I thought it might be the humidity or it might be the tapioca instead of corn, but I did not want to add any more flour, so I improvised and placed the dough in a gallon ziptop bag and cut off half inch at the corner, and piped the dough in circles on individual, starch-dusted squares of wax paper on a baking sheet. And THAT was serendipitous! Happy accident!
I put the pans in the warm oven (turned off, of course) and let them rise. And then I peeled them off the wax paper (carefully! slowly!) and deep fried them in the pretty blue enameled cast iron dutch oven Grandpa bought me for Christmas two years ago. Oh, WOW!
I do believe I am very close to finding the Holy Grail of Gluten Free Doughnuts, the knock-off Krispy Kreme of the Gluten-free World! They were just a little heavy, so with just a little more tinkering, and we will arrive! 🙂
I did not have time to fry the whole batch yesterday, so I placed the bag in the fridge right after I finished piping. I piped those out this morning. The dough had risen a little in the fridge, and it rose even more in the warmed oven. The result? EVEN BETTER THAN BEFORE! Oh, we are so close I can smell it. (Literally. My house smells SO good!)
I tried several toppings: granulated sugar, a plain glaze, a chocolate glaze, and– my fav– a maple glaze. Grandpa is going to have the figure of Santa if he doesn’t stop taste-testing! We ate a few (well, one of us ate more than the other) and then I placed the others on a cookie sheet (lined with wax paper)in the freezer. Once frozen, I transferred to a zip-top bag and put back in the freezer. One, frozen, heated in the microwave on a napkin for 15 seconds is divine. Doughnuts keep well in the freezer!
I will try this again (maybe after Christmas– so much other baking to do!) and use cornstarch instead of the tapioca and see what happens.
Thank you so much for the recipe! 🙂 You can find a photo here:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/205336064238259795/
Lisa and Happy Grandpa
Hey Lisa,
That’s awesome that the recipe worked well for you! Sorry the dough turned out a little on the wet side (but it sounds like you managed quite well)! You could also try adding just a bit more cornstarch or tapioca starch and then beating it in…that’s a little dangerous, though, because you run the risk of making the dough too dry.
Submerging completely in oil in a dutch oven sounds like THE WAY TO GO. When I made them I only filled the pan about halfway because I didn’t want to waste expensive olive oil, but one of these days I just need to go the whole way!
It’s great to hear that the refrigerated dough worked even better! I hadn’t tested this recipe yet with refrigerating overnight. I’ll put your results in the notes on the recipe!
If you do try making this again after Christmas, Lisa, you should totally make olle bollen! It’s a Dutch New Year’s treat that is killer good (olle bolllen literally means “oil balls”). The only difference in the recipe is that you’d add about 1/2 cup of raisins to the dough, and instead of rolling it out and shaping doughnuts you just let it rise in the bowl. Then, heat a pot full of at least 3″ of oil (the olle bollen has to submerge) and use a rounded spoon to drop balls of dough into the oil. It’s way easier to make olle bollen because you don’t have to roll the dough out, and it is SO AMAZING. We used to make this every New Year’s before we started eating GF. Last year I had this doughnut recipe and we ate olle bollen for the first time in years. My poor parents were gone that day and…ahem…there was no olle bollen left when they got back!
Ok now you have me excited, I am looking for the right gf flour mix to make my ollie bollen… have you tried them yet? last year I used the Pamelas’ Artisan Flour blend…but I dont have enough for a full recipe….
They were better than when I made them with wheat flour !
Hi Grace,
Yes, I made ollie bollen with this recipe last year and they were awesome! Definitely doing it again this New Year’s. As far as using a flour mix in place of the flours given in the recipe, I think that would work just fine so long as it’s the same total quantity. Make sure that the flour mix you use doesn’t have baking powder already added, though, and also check for xanthan gum in the mix. If it doesn’t include xanthan gum, be sure to add some.
Anyway, I hope your ollie bollen turns out well! Happy New Year!
Hi,
Does this recipe work for jam donuts? Can you form balls and add jam or custard at the end?
Thanks,
Gillian
Yes, this recipe does work for jam doughnuts! I’ve done it that way before and they were delicious. I can’t say for sure that custard would work since I haven’t tested it, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t. 🙂
Wow, this blog is totally awesome! Gorgeous pictures and very clear instructions. I’m looking forward to receiving your newsletter!
In this recipe – can I substitute xanthan gum for the guar gum?
Hi Danielle! Thanks so much for subscribing. And yes, you can totally use xanthan gum instead of guar gum!
These were AMAZING! I had a snow day and wanted to make doughnuts without going to the store for anything strange, and this recipe fit the fill (also who bakes doughnuts? they should be fried). I did substitute honey for molasses because I didn’t have any, and I used tapioca starch. They had a wonderful texture, though I ended up piping blobs instead of doughnut shapes (I had trouble cutting them out). Thank you!
Hi Laura, so glad they worked out well for you. Piping sounds like a really good idea too, as the dough is tricky to handle!