Amish Glazed Donuts

These donuts are absolutely going to melt in your mouth! Homemade donuts covered in a smooth glaze make up one of our favorite breakfast treats. If you love from-scratch recipes that have been perfected over many generations, don’t miss my Glazed Cake Donuts and  Apple Fritters!

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Amish Glazed Donuts

There is nothing I like more than working with dough and creating beautiful and delicious baked goods for my family. This recipe is a labor of love, truly, and one that will most likely be saved for the most special of occasions!

How to Make Amish Glazed Donuts

The original recipe I am sharing is called “Amish Glazed Donuts” and I found it in an old cookbook from a church in Pennsylvania. However, after extensive research on the topic, the Amish recipe doesn’t seem to vary greatly from traditional recipes. The main difference is the method, as most recipes seem to have the same basic ingredients.

This recipe was interesting to me as it utilizes two separated “wet” ingredients. You start by creating the milk mixture; milk, sugar, salt, and butter. You set that aside to cool a bit. Then the water mixture is started. That consists of the water, sugar, yeast. This needs to rise and bubble, indicating an active yeast. After those two are done, the dough can be made.

So while the steps seem daunting at first, they really are easy to do and the dough will come together quickly!

The other aspect to this method was the rising times. Yes, most recipes call for the dough to rise so that in itself is not unique. But one thing I had never done before was let the dough rise a bit after I have cut out the individual donuts, and I really appreciate that extra step! These donuts puffed up SO beautifully in the hot oil and stayed that way. Donut skip that part! 😉

How to Fry Donuts

Dropping beautiful dough into a too-hot oil or a too-cold oil can do bad stuff to the beautiful dough that you have spent hours with. I found that the best way to ensure your oil stayed at a consistent 350°F was to have a thermometer right in the oil at all times. If you happen to have a pan large enough for frying 3-4 donuts at once, the addition of the dough can decrease the temperature significantly. If you see the temperature lower, you can immediately add heat and get it back up to temp. Requested info by a reader: I used a dutch oven with enough oil to reach 2inch deep. I don’t recommend adding more than that. If you have any leftover oil, don’t throw it out; first, check out How to Clarify Used Cooking Oil so it doesn’t go to waste.

Be prepared!

I found that when making glazed donuts it helped to have two people. One for frying and one for the glaze. To best prepare for this make sure you have these tools out and ready:

• thermometer safe for hot liquids
• a hand-held strainer or forks to easily rotate the donuts in the hot oil
• plate lined with paper towel to set hot donuts on
• several cookie sheets fitted with cooling racks for setting glazed donuts
• a bowl for the glaze that is large enough to drop an entire donut in
• fork/spoon/tongs for easy transferring of donuts
• a table lined with parchment paper to set donuts on to dry

How to Glaze Donuts

I prefer to glaze the donuts when they are still warm, yet cool enough to handle. To make the glazing easier, I used a bowl that was bigger than needed just to make sure I could easily drop and remove the hot donuts. Then, when I was ready to glaze, I set my bowl right next to a pan with a cooling rack in it. Drop an entire donut into the glaze and then flip it over. Using a fork or the handle of a wooden spoon, lift the donut out by the center hole and let the excess glaze drip off. Place the donut on the cooling rack and allow it to harden.

Double Glaze

Who doesn’t love a donut with double the glaze? But, as much as I love doing that, I don’t recommend it with a recipe this big. You will double your process time and will also need to double your glaze recipe. If you happen to cut this donut recipe in half, that would be a great time to try out double glazing! After the first coat of glaze has hardened for a bit, just re-dip the donut and then allow to set.

Donut Glaze Recipe

Making the glaze is easy as it’s just a few ingredients. Sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, salt, and milk. I don’t know about you, but whenever I see corn syrup added to a recipe I tend to want to leave it out. But for these donuts, it really does add something of value. I can say that because I made two versions of glaze, one with corn syrup and one without. We found that the donuts with corn syrup glaze were coated better, stayed soft and moist longer, and even tasted better. If you are adamant that you want to leave it out, I recommend using milk, confectioners sugar, salt, and a tiny bit of vanilla. The vanilla can be overpowering if you use too much and take away from the light-as-air taste of this donut recipe. If you use good quality vanilla like McCormick, you will not run into any issues.

Chocolate Glazed Donut

I tried out several different version of chocolate donut glaze and was disappointed by them all. It was a LONG day in the kitchen! Finally, after an hour of frustration with gloppy, lumpy, greasy, and gross tasting glazes, I added some cocoa powder to the glaze recipe below. It worked AMAZING!

Simply add 1/2 cup of cocoa powder to the recipe below and add any milk as needed. I added about 1 tablespoon more of milk (maybe 2 depending on the humidity in your area) and not only was the glaze shiny and beautiful, but it tasted great!

When dipping the donut into the chocolate glaze I opted for only dipping the top. The donuts that were 100% coated in chocolate glaze seemed to only taste like chocolate and not any of that glorious donut inside. Feel free to test this out and see which you prefer!

Can You Make the Dough Ahead of Time?

Yes! Simply make the dough through step 8 the night before and then chill in the refrigerator until the morning. When you are ready to begin, remove the dough from the refrigerator, allow it to come to room temperature and then start with “Preparing the Donuts” in the recipe instructions.