Lemon Baked Donuts

Easy, quick, flavorful and addicting these homemade Lemon Baked Donuts are full of fresh lemon flavor and glazed in a delicious tart lemon glaze.

Donuts are something that I’ve become known for in my house and with other people. Everyone is always asking me to make them donuts.

It’s one of those recipe that I have been making for years and one recipe that can be adapted so easily that you can come up with varieties of flavors, just check out my Strawberry Lemon Donuts, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Donuts and these Texas Almond Sheet Cake Donuts!

As you can clearly see, we love everything lemon around this joint. What is there not to love about lemon. When you put lemon in a baked donut recipe, you have really upped your lemon game. 

Breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day, and I’m more of a sweet breakfast lover and these donuts really really do hit the spot.

INGREDIENTS NEEDED:

• Flour
• Baking powder
• Salt
• Sugar
• Eggs
• Sour cream
• Milk
• Lemon juice & zest
• Vanilla
• Powdered sugar

I’m obsessed with easy recipe, if you can’t tell by now if you’ve been reading my site for some time, we do mainly quick and easy around here. 

These lemon baked donuts whip up in just minutes and only take 10 minutes in the oven to bake. How easy can you get with that?!

One question that is asked all the time is “how long do baked donuts last”? Now that is a question up for debate. A lot of convenience stores and bakeries will sell them discounted the next day.

This donut recipe, as long as it’s properly stored which means at room temperature, covered and in an airtight container should last 1-2 days. Obviously we love the peak freshness when it comes to donuts, and these make a relatively smaller batch so you shouldn’t have any problem with them even lasting longer than a day!

WHAT CAN YOU USE IF YOU DON’T HAVE A DONUT PAN?

Donut pans aren’t something that people usually keep around, unless you make donuts as often as I do. Honestly it is a relatively inexpensive piece of kitchen equipment and you can find a cheap one here.

But for those of you that don’t feel the need to purchase a donut pan to make baked donuts, then here are some options for you:

• Muffin tin. Roll up foil into a log that is taller than your muffin wells and about 1″-1 1/2″ in diameter and place it in the center of the well. While it doesn’t quite give you the right shape, it will still give you “donuts”.
• Free form, spray a baking sheet with one stick spray and line with parchment paper, pipe your donut batter into circles about 2″ apart on the tray and bake in oven. Now they probably won’t be as pretty as if you would use a donut pan but they will work.
• You can also always make donut holes with this recipe as well. Using a mini muffin tin, just fill the wells with batter and bake, checking for doneness after about 5-7 minutes.

There are options if you do not own a donut pan, no worries, trust me we’ve made donut holes more than once and they work perfectly fine.

HOW TO MAKE BAKED DONUTS:

1. Pre-heat oven to 400.
2. In bowl, add all dry ingredients and stir to combine.
3. Add eggs, sour cream, milk, butter, lemon juice, lemon zest and vanilla and stir everything until just combined.
4. Spray your donut pan with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.
5. Spoon or pipe your batter into wells of donut pan.
6. Place in oven and cook for about 10 minutes or until donuts spring back when touched.
7. Remove from oven and let cool in pan for a few minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.
8. Meanwhile mix together your glaze ingredients in bowl,
9. Once donuts are cool dip tops of each donut into glaze then sprinkle with yellow decorators sugar if desired.

Just a simple easy baked donut recipe that can be whipped up any time of day. We aren’t just morning donut people, we are all day donut people, I’m sure a few of you could agree with me on that front.

Now that we are well on our way into summer I wanted to share one of my favorite lemon treats with you guys. And these Lemon Baked Donuts are one that we can’t get enough of. 

I’m lucky that everyone in my house shares in my love of lemon that I can bake and cook with it often without getting any moaning or groaning!

TIPS AND TRICKS:

• Place your batter in piping bag and cut the tip off and pipe into donut pan saves so much time, we highly recommend doing this over spooning batter into wells.
• If you are a real lemon lover, replace the vanilla in the recipe with lemon extract.
• Over baking donuts will result in hard and dry donuts, you don’t want that!
• You can easily halve, double or triple this recipe with easy! 
• This is a great starter base for any flavor of donut, we use this base recipe for almost all of our donut flavors.

If you want that morning punch and get a jump to your day, whip up these Lemon Baked Donuts and grab a cup of coffee and start it off right, you won’t be disappointed!

Lemon Baked Donuts

Easy, quick, flavorful and addicting these homemade Lemon Baked Donuts are full of fresh lemon flavor and glazed in a delicious tart lemon glaze.

5 from 5 votes

Print Pin Rate

Course: Breakfast, Dessert

Cuisine: American

Prep Time: 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes minutes

Servings: 12 donuts

Calories: 241kcal

Author: Tornadough Alli

Ingredients

• ▢ 2 cups all-purpose flour
• ▢ 2 tsp baking powder
• ▢ 1/2 tsp salt
• ▢ 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• ▢ 2 eggs
• ▢ 1/2 cup sour cream
• ▢ 6 Tbs milk
• ▢ 2 Tbs butter melted
• ▢ 2 Tbs lemon juice
• ▢ 2 tsp lemon juice
• ▢ 2 tsp vanilla

Glaze:

• ▢ 2 cups powdered sugar
• ▢ 4 Tbs lemon juice
• ▢ 2 tsp lemon zest
• ▢ Yellow decorators sugar optional

Instructions

• Pre-heat oven to 400.
• In bowl, add all dry ingredients and stir to combine.
• Add eggs, sour cream, milk, butter, lemon juice, lemon zest and vanilla and stir everything until just combined.
• Spray your donut pan with non-stick cooking spray.
• Spoon or pipe into your batter into wells of donut pan.
• Cook for about 10 minutes or until donuts spring back when touched.
• Remove from oven and let cool in pan a few minutes before removing to wire rack to cool completely.
• Meanwhile mix together your glaze ingredients.
• Once donuts are cool dip tops of each donut into glaze and sprinkle with yellow decorators sugar if desired.

Nutrition

Calories: 241kcal | Carbohydrates: 45g | Protein: 3g | Fat: 4g | Saturated Fat: 2g | Cholesterol: 38mg | Sodium: 136mg | Potassium: 145mg | Fiber: 0g | Sugar: 28g | Vitamin A: 170IU | Vitamin C: 3.7mg | Calcium: 62mg | Iron: 1.2mg

Tornadough Alli is not a nutritionist or dietitian, and any nutritional information shared is an estimate. If calorie count and nutritional value is important to you, we recommend running the ingredients through whichever online nutritional calculator you prefer. Calories and values can vary depending on which brands were used.

Tried this recipe?Mention @TornadoughAlli or tag #TornadoughAlli!

Nutrition Disclaimer