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
Would these work with Butter Tastin’ Homestyle Grands?
ABSOTIVELY POSOLUTELY!
Just make sure your oil is on about medium and let it heat up for several several minutes. You have to cook them a weeeee bit lower to get them good and done in the center but you still want to only put them in fully heated oil so they won’t go soaking it up.
They will work and they will be yummilicious.
Gratefully,
Christy 🙂
Wow! These look fantastic! I love homemade donuts.My kids used to love it when I made them.
Your site looks terrific and I’ll be returning often.
BTW: Thanks for your great feedback on my Hearty Homemade Bread article over at Suite 101.
Hey Melody!!!
Its so great to see you here! I’ve thought about that bread often but haven’t got to make it yet. You better believe it is on my list though!!!!!
Its so great to have you here, I’m gushing!!!!
Welcome to Southern Plate! Please do come back often, sit a spell and get comfy! Food’ll be passed around soon, always is!
Gratefully,
christy
You were buzzed:
http://www.ohanamamablog.com/2009/01/mom-buzz-has-had-busy-week-i-am.html
Oh wow, thank you!!!
Evidently, I’m the only one that can’t do these. I thought I was doing everything right. My dough, butter and stuff was ready, my grease was hot….I tried a hole, and it looked like it did what it was supposed to, but seemed really quick. I threw in about 3 donuts and as soon as I the last one was it, I needed to turn them. Well, visually they looked pretty. I couldn’t help it, I had to try one……gooey. My problem was, in order to cook them through, they were about overdone on the outside. They weren’t burnt yet but close. Well……….we ate ’em anyway.
I was scared to turn them down for fear that the grease would soak into them. What’s odd, I can make indian fry bread in my fry daddy, that tastes just like you get at a pow wow (throw you some pie filling and powdered sugar, or taco stuff………mmmmm) but I can’t do something so similar and simple.
What’d I do wrong?!
Help me, the closest Krispy Kreme is over an hour away!!!
Don’t you worry, Cookie, I’ve had this happen before, too!
Your oil just needs to be turned down a bit. I actually did the same thing today, had my oil a wee bit too hot for the first batch and turned it down a bit for the second. If you are cooking them on medium high or say a 7, I’d turn it down to medium or a 5.
If you are cooking medium, turn it down a notch or two. Just give it five minutes or so at that heat to get good and hot and then cook them as usual. You’ll be just fine and they will get done in the center.
The jelly filled ones I posted today are especially trick with gooey centers so you really have to make sure you have hot oil, but not so hot that it cooks the outside instantly.
If this doesn’t help, give me another holler here and I’ll elaborate more or if you just want to provide more details and see if I can tell you a bit more, feel free!
Christy 🙂
I reckon I have to remember to get me somemore canned biscuits and try again. Well, you must have esp(n)lol, cause I was thinking bout jelly filled and boston creme(which are my favorite donuts, after glazed and topped with chocolate) and what do u do?! post ’em!!! Can’t believe my luck 😀
SEE!! It was meant to be!! you NEEEEEEED these! they are calling your name!!!
coooookiiiieeeee
cooooooooookkkkkkkiiiieeeeeee
COOOOOOOOOOOOOOKKKKKKKKKKIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!!!
WE NEED DOUGHNUTS!!!
I wrote a letter to someone’s rear end on the comments section of Baby Boston Cremes. You might want to read it aloud to yours if you need more motivation 🙂
hehe
its towards the bottom on the comments section.
yeah, i got too much free time sometimes.
This is one of the recipes we made in 6th grade beginning home-ec class in 1972. Instead of the cinnamon sugar, we mixed powdered sugar with milk or water until it was like a very thin frosting and drizzled it over the top–made them like Krispy Kremes. Thanks for the memory.
thank YOU!
That does sound like fun. I think the cinnamon sugar is my favorite because of how it forms such a nice coating with the melted butter and then you can get it to flake off in your mouth and you have this buttery, cinnamony, sugary explosion…not that I have ever eaten one, of course ~winks~
Awesome!!! Looks fantastic! Southern Plate is really changing the type of Mom I am… Went from Microwave queen to a talented Machine 😀 Thank you so much! I have learned so much and try out alot of your recipes! I know my son is really going to benefit from all of this!
Brittainy,
You are so sweet, thank you so very much. I LOVE that what I am doing is making people happy! I still can’t get over how many page views Southern Plate is getting!!
I had almost four million in December!!!
I LOVE getting to do this and thats all because of people like you who let me know you are enjoying it!!!
Thank you!!!
Christy 🙂
Hey loved this recipe. THANKS SO VERY MUCH. My granny made these same doughnuts when I was a child. She passed when I was a teenager. I never had a recipe as such and never made them but I wanted to. Now I can…..thanks!
Hey!
You are so very welcome!! I bet your Granny is proud that you have this little bit of her now 🙂
Gratefully,
Christy