Gluten-Free Chocolate Covered Banana Donuts

We’re so hot we’re sweating. Mid-summer baking sprees can be perilous.

Truth be told, I’ve not been too excited about food lately, but when I popped into the New York baking supply shop on West 22nd in one last desperate attempt to locally find something for a care package swap, I spied the mini-donut pans.

This picture does very little to show just how incredibly wee the donuts from this pan are. They’re super tiny. All the better to pop half a dozen into your mouth before you even realize your hand is moving.

I liked the look of Lolo’s mini donuts, but was short on traditional gluten free safeties (like an all purpose gluten-free mix) and didn’t want to have to tinker with her recipe too much. So what did I have on hand? Odds and ends of too many types of gluten-free flours and a couple of dying bananas. When life gives you dying bananas, of course, you make banana donuts.

Gluten-Free Banana Cake Donut:

Dry ingredients:

1/2 c. white rice flour

1/4 c. buckwheat flour

1/4 c. cornstarch

2 tbsp. potato flour

1 tsp. xantham gum

1/2 c. sugar

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

Wet ingredients:

1/2 c. soymilk

1/2 tsp. apple cider vinegar

2 tbsp. melted Earth Balance (or other GF margarine)

1/2 tsp of agar powder

1 tsp. vanilla powder

1/2 c. of well-mashed, ripe banana (leave no chunks behind!)

Set oven to 350. Combine all of the dry ingredients in one bowl. In a second bowl add vinegar to soymilk and let soymilk curdle. Melt Earth Balance but do not add it to the wet ingredients. After soymilk has curdled, stir in agar and vanilla powder. Let sit for a couple of minutes. Stir in melted Earth Balance and the mashed banana. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well. You should end up with a firm, pliable dough (think Playdough). At this point, you can follow Lolo, because that’s pretty much what I did. I regretted my decision not to oil the non-stick pan because they stuck (not surprising as I decreased the fat content further and people were already having this problem with Lolo’s original recipe). I had to gently work around the edges with a knife, which was a bit of a pain with twelve mini donuts.

I have to say, I found them tasty. They have a decent crumb.

But they are slightly gummy. To be honest, I had considered that possible outcome. Bananas tend to have that impact on baked goods. As does potato flour. So I’ve decided that in round two, I will halve the amount of banana. I’m currently on the hunt for a decent banana extract or imitation banana flavor because I definitely want to be able to compensate for the banana I take out. I might also ditch the potato flour because I think that even with less banana, the donuts would still be too moist if I left it in.