How To Make Doughnuts at Home
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Today we’re learning how to make doughnuts at home. It’s so quick and easy to make crisp yet tender cinnamon-sugar doughnuts from scratch with a secret ingredient.
What if I told you that you could make this homemade doughnut recipe real quick, serving them warm and golden to your family, with no knowledge whatsoever of yeast or dough, no special equipment other than what you likely have on hand, and have them done start to finish in under 10 minutes, including prep time?
Sounds too good to be true right? Well, I’m here to show you how to make doughnuts at home quickly and easily with a secret ingredient… canned biscuit dough! A favorite ingredient down South, we’re going to turn out canned biscuits into doughnuts and have doughnut holes to spare! And just in case you’re wondering, no, they do NOT taste anything like a biscuit when you are done. They taste every bit as melt-in-your-mouth good as they look!
All you have to do is deep-fry them in oil, dip them in melted butter, and toss them in cinnamon sugar. 4 ingredients and 10 minutes are all it takes to make a batch of homemade doughnuts from scratch. Music to my ears! We Southerners (and humans in general) love our doughnuts and now you have an easy doughnut recipe to share with your friends and family. Biscuit doughnuts… they’re the new trend 😉.
Recipe Ingredients
- Vegetable oil for frying
- Canned biscuit dough
- Butter
- Cinnamon
- Granulated sugar
How to Make Doughnuts at Home
In a bowl, stir together cinnamon and sugar and set that aside.
Melt a stick of butter in another bowl and set aside as well.
Now they will both be handy as soon as the doughnuts are done.
Making the doughnut hole
Now you can go buy a doughnut cutter or some other fancy finagled device (which I actually have tucked away in the dark recesses of my kitchen drawers), but I like to show y’all how to do things the simple way. I’m a big fan of not overcomplicating a simple matter.
For that very reason, we are going to just use a plain old 20 oz bottle cap to cut the centers of our doughnuts out.
Cut out the holes in every doughnut, reserving them to cook along with the doughnuts.
Voila, our doughnuts are done.
Pour your oil into a skillet. You need a little less than a half inch.
Heat your oil on medium to medium-high heat for several minutes. You want it to reach at least 350 to 375 degrees (use a thermometer to double-check).
We want it to be hot so that our doughnuts are instantly seared when they enter it. This prevents them from absorbing too much of the oil and being soggy. However, we don’t want it too hot so that the outside gets done before the inside.
How to test your oil
I personally put a doughnut hole in mine. It should sizzle and bubble around the edges and then you know it’s hot enough.
You may need to turn your heat down a bit after testing it with some doughnut holes to see if it is just right.
Once the doughnut hole is golden, remove it and let it cool for a minute before taking a bite to make sure it’s fully cooked, not gooey, in the center.
Time to cook the doughnuts!
If your skillet isn’t big enough you may have to do them in batches. By the time you have put them all in, some may already be ready to turn. It takes less than a minute for them to be ready to turn over.
This is how they look, nice and golden.
Turn them all over and let them cook until the undersides are this way as well. All in all, this should take less than two minutes.
Remove cooked doughnuts from the oil with a slotted spoon and place them on a paper towel-lined plate or a wire rack if you’re feeling fancy.
Now do the same thing with the doughnut holes.
Here are our cooked doughnuts, now let’s add a little bit of heaven to them!
The doughnuts should have cooled just enough so that you can handle them but they will still be very warm.
Pick each one up and dip both sides in melted butter…
Then press them down into the cinnamon sugar on both sides.
Repeat with all doughnuts and doughnut holes.
Eat them warm.
They will positively melt in your mouth, they are so good!
No one will believe you started out with canned biscuits so let’s just keep that little tidbit to ourselves 😉.
Biscuit doughnuts, ready in mere minutes!
What a fun breakfast or evening treat when the family is visiting.
Storage
Store leftover doughnuts in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days. I recommend reheating them in the oven or air fryer.
Recipe Notes
- For the biscuits, any style at all will do. Just don’t get the flaky layers because they will absorb the oil whereas normal biscuits won’t if we get our oil hot enough before frying them.
- Besides the cinnamon sugar coating, you can cover your biscuit doughnuts in pumpkin spice sugar or simply powdered sugar. Alternatively, swap the granulated sugar for brown sugar.
Recipe FAQs
How long do you fry donuts for?
You only need to fry doughnuts for about 2 to 3 minutes, until both sides are golden brown.
What is the best oil for deep-frying donuts?
The best oil for deep-frying doughnuts is a neutral oil like peanut oil, vegetable oil, or canola oil.
Do you bake or fry donuts?
Most doughnuts (like those from Dunkin’ Donuts or Krispy Kreme) are deep-fried, not baked. If you’d prefer baked to fried donuts, follow this baked donut recipe to make them in the oven.
How do you make glazed doughnuts?
To transform this into a glazed donut recipe, skip the cinnamon sugar and instead drop the cooled doughnuts into a vanilla glaze instead. All you need is confectioner’s sugar, vanilla extract, and milk. For a chocolate glaze instead, add a tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder to the above glaze ingredients and follow the directions in the post.
Check out these other delicious recipes:
Quick and Easy Jelly-Filled Doughnuts
How to Make Funnel Cakes at Home
Easy Fried Pies, Southern-Style
Ingredients
- 1 large can Grands biscuits
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1.5 tbsp ground cinnamon
- 1 stick melted butter
- vegetable oil for frying
Instructions
- Pour oil into skillet to a depth of a little less than 1/2 an inch and heat on medium to medium-high heat for about five minutes.vegetable oil for frying
- In a bowl, melt butter. In a separate bowl, combine cinnamon and sugar.1 cup granulated sugar, 1 stick melted butter, 1.5 tbsp ground cinnamon
- Using a plastic bottle cap, cut the center out of each biscuit. Drop dough into hot oil, watching carefully and turning when golden. Once doughnuts are golden on both sides, remove them to a paper towel-lined plate with a slotted spoon. Repeat until all dough is cooked, including doughnut holes.1 large can Grands biscuits
- Dip both sides of each doughnut into melted butter, then press both sides into the cinnamon sugar mixture. Serve warm.
Nutrition
I love these too! I’m partial to the glazed version – so good!!
My everyday dishes are Mikasa and are totally 70s. Seriously. I got them in 1977 and I still use them today!!
These look great – I typically make a honey butter mixture and dip my fried biscuit sticks in…I love this!
-Darius
http://www.everydaycookin.com
I have not made these in years, my friend always wanted to make them, we would try to put jelly in the middle, and we always made a big mess, but it was fun and they were good doughnuts!
I have a can of biscuits in the fridge now that is turning into doughnuts for dessert tonight thanks to you!
We had the blue and white dishes that I think my mother got with the stamp things at the grocery store?? They had currier and ives prints on them I think.
I have such great memories of making these with my daddy when I was a little girl. We didn’t have much money, so when momma and daddy bought canned biscuits, we kids would get so hopeful. Then, when daddy put the cast iron skillet and oil on, and reached for the biscuits, we ran to the kitchen with great big ole smiles on our faces. Looking back, I remember what a kick he got out of that. Thanks for posting this Christy!
Oh they look so good! I love donuts when they’re hot, after they cool down I’m not so much a fan, but give me hot fresh cinnamon donuts and I’ll eat them all! We don’t sell the biscuits here though, and nothing at all similar so for now, I’ll have to settle with the odd occasion when I walk past a store selling them hot and fresh.
How funny that you posted this! My husband and I just polished off a batch of these.
As a result, all I could say when I opened the email is “ugh!”. I am stuffed.
I usually only dip them in sugar , I’ll have to try cinnamon next time. In a year. Because I can’t imagine eating them again any time soon!
My momma used to make these when I was little! I still remember helping dip them in cinnamon sugar or dusting powdered sugar over them.