High Altitude Baked Apple Cider Doughnuts
These soft and fluffy apple cider doughnuts are baked not fried, full of apple flavor from reduced apple cider, perfectly spiced, coated in crunchy cinnamon sugar, and so easy to make!
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- 2 Doughnut Pan (12 molds)
Ingredients
Doughnuts
- 1 ½ cups apple cider, reduced to 1/2 cup (or 1/2 cup apple cider concentrate or boiled cider)
- ½ cup unsweetened applesauce
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, melted
- 1 large egg
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed
- 1 ⅓ cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
- ⅛ tsp ground cloves
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
Coating
- 3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
Instructions
Apple Cider Concentrate
- Pour the apple cider into a saucepan. Over medium heat, let the cider simmer until it's reduced to 1/2 cup. Set aside to cool for 30 minutes, or make it a day or two in advance.
- If you're using store bought apple cider concentrate or boiled cider, you can skip this step, and just move straight to mixing up the donut batter. SEE RECIPE NOTES
Apple Cider Donuts
- Preheat the oven to 375F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Spray two standard doughnut pans (6 doughnuts each) with nonstick baking spray. If you only have one pan, you can just bake half the batter at a time.
- In a bowl, whisk together the cooled reduced cider with the applesauce, melted butter, egg, vanilla and brown sugar.
- In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, spices, baking soda and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and whisk until combined.
- Either spoon the batter into the greased pans and then smooth it out with a small spatula, or fill a piping bag, snip off the end, and pipe the batter into the pans.
- Bake the doughnuts on the center oven rack until risen and cooked through, about 11-12 minutes. Let cool in the pans for 4-5 minutes, then gently turn out onto a cooling rack.
Cinnamon Sugar
- To coat the doughnuts, dip a pastry brush in the melted butter and lightly brush the warm doughnuts with the butter.
- Coat in the cinnamon sugar mixture, then serve warm or at room temperature.
Notes
- These doughnuts are best served warm and freshly baked.
- The leftover doughnuts are still fantastic, though, and should be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
- I use this brand of spiced apple cider concentrate or boiled cider. This will have a much more intense, concentrated flavor than the homemade apple cider reduction used in today's recipe. If using purchased boiled cider, you may want to decrease it by several tablespoons and increase the applesauce by the same amount, so that the flavor of the concentrate isn't too strong.
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