Baked Banana Cake Donuts

You will need a doughnut pan to make baked cake donuts, instead of fried. Often times we end up with extra over ripe bananas and this is another great recipe to use them up. The verdict is: this is one of my new favorite recipes.

Here are a few tips for successful baked donut making. Only fill the tin 2/3 full, because if you do more, the doughnut raises so much that you lose the hole in the center. The other tip to success is, the oven must be preheated, and then left for five minutes longer, to really get it hot, before you pop the doughnuts in. If you put the icing on when they are fresh out of the oven and still hot, it melts into the doughnut, and drip down the sides and looks like the icing at a professional doughnut shop. I used a butter cream icing successfully. If you wait to ice the doughnuts until after they have cooled, the icing looks more like when you ice a cake. If you do this method you can add sprinkles right away, as the icing will set up in 2 – 5 minutes. You can add some cocoa powder to a basic butter cream icing to create a yummy chocolate fudge icing. It can be great fun to decorate the doughnuts, especially with children. You can also shake the cooked doughnuts in a cinnamon and sugar mixture. To do this, brush the cooked doughnut with a light coat of melted butter and them shake them, one at a time in a plastic or paper bag of sugar and cinnamon. Another doughnut finish is to brush them with the melted butter and then shake in a plastic or paper bag of powdered icing sugar. Store them in a cookie tin, and they will stay moist for several days, that is, if they last that long. It is also worth noting that while Canadians consume the most donuts in the world and have the most donut stores per capita.

Bananas are a good source of magnesium and potassium. Potassium is an essential mineral for maintaining normal heart and blood pressure. The small amount of fat that bananas contain, is an extremely beneficial type, that reduces bad cholesterol. Bananas contain digestive friendly fiber, pectin and fructooligosaccharides (FOS). FOS is a fructose type carbohydrate that can not be digested until it is in the lower intestine gut microbiome, where it contributes to a healthy immune system. Bananas actually contain dopamine and several nutrients to make dopamine. Dopamine is our feel good, happy hormone. So never throw away over ripe bananas, turn them into little dopamine bites.

Baked Banana Cake Donuts (makes 24)

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup oil

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup banana, very ripe and mashed

1 1/4 teaspoon double acting baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup milk

2 cups flour

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Butter the donut pan for small donuts. Beat together the butter, oil and sugars. Beat in the eggs, milk and banana. baking powder, baking soda, salt and spice. Beat in and the flour. Spoon into the donut pan, only fill 2/3 full. Bake for 10 minutes. A key to success is having the oven really preheated.