Butterfly pea flower powder adds a bright natural hue to these baked gluten-free mini blue donuts. Decorate them with a cream cheese honey glaze and add flowers and berries for a whimsical touch. A fun project to bake with kids. They're a perfect mini treat to serve at an afternoon tea party.
Cooking with Amelia
I've had fun cooking with Amelia, my little cousin, when she's come to visit with her mom over the years. Our first kitchen adventure was making a batch of playdough together with my other little cousin, Lincoln, when they were 4 years old. Then we whipped up a batch of easy no-bake cereal bars when Amelia was 7.
Now, I had the fun of baking with the teen-aged Amelia, who's turned into a lovely, spunky 15-year-old high school student. She's a crackerjack hockey player, both ice hockey and field hockey. She loves spending time outdoors and is excited about her fall semester, an intensive environmental studies program where she'll do a lot of wilderness hiking, overnight camping, backpacking, and canoeing. She is also crazy about downhill mountainbiking and ripping around the yard on our quad.
And she's a budding baker, too!
Baking Project: Butterfly Pea Mini Blue Donuts
We planned a Fairy Garden Afternoon Tea Picnic while Amelia was visiting, and what is more appropriate and fairy-like than these darling mini blue donuts? We used powdered butterfly pea flowers to get that true blue shade into our baked mini cake donuts. This magical powder is fun to use - it's a natural blue colour if used as-is (like we did), but if you add an acid, like lemon juice, it turns magenta pink (it's fun to use it in lemonade). The powder can be ordered online or found in some specialty stores.
These little donuts are whimsical and delicious. A touch of nutmeg makes them taste like traditional cake donuts, and the luscious, creamy honey glaze makes them decadent. These are gluten-free, but you can use regular flour, too. Amelia used blue borage flowers and snippets of white cilantro flowers to decorate these little two-bite dainties.
Let's Make our Mini Blue Donuts
Join Amelia as she gets baking!
She measures out the butter first, so she can melt it and let it cool while she measures out the dry ingredients. The butterfly pea flower powder needs to be sifted, since it can have lots of little lumps that won't dissolve properly when you stir the batter. Amelia stirs the dry ingredients with a whisk in the sieve, but you can use your hand or a spoon, too.
The magical blue colour appears once you add the wet ingredients. Look at that batter!
Piping the Batter
To get nicely shaped little donuts, it's best to pipe the batter into the pan. Scrape the blue donut batter into a piping bag fitted with a large round tip, or put it into a heavy-duty zip-top plastic bag and cut off one corner to make about a ½-inch (1 cm) hole and use that to pipe out the batter. Squeeze out the batter into the mini donut pans in a smooth, even circle. If you fill each donut well only half full, you'll have enough batter to get 24 mini blue donuts.
Time to bake those blue babies. And while they're baking, there's always time to do some clowning around!
Adding the Pretty: Frosting the Mini Blue Donuts
Whip together some softened cream cheese, icing sugar, and honey with another touch of butterfly pea flower powder to make it a heavenly blue, fluffy, creamy frosting. Then spread that in a luscious swirl over each mini blue donut.
A blueberry, borage flower, and cilantro blossom made these mini blue donuts look special. Amelia's choice was to keep them simple, and they did look stunning. Any small edible blossoms would work, or even just a blueberry and a small mint leaf.
Mini Blue Donuts for a Tea Party
We had a lot of fun preparing for our Fairy Garden Afternoon Tea Party Picnic, and these mini blue donuts were part of the deliciousness. Amelia also made a fun and summery gluten-free almond sponge cake decorated with berries, edible flowers, and herbs - so pretty. See cake recipe and the full story of our magical picnic here.
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Guten Appetit!
Mini Blue Donuts
Equipment
- 2 mini donut pans with 12 (2-inch/5 cm diameter) donut wells in each
Ingredients
for the mini blue donuts:
- 3 tablespoons (45 ml) butter, melted and cooled
- ¾ cup (100 g) gluten-free flour blend or regular flour for non-gluten-free
- ¾ teaspoon baking powder
- 1½ teaspoons butterfly pea flower powder
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- ⅛ teaspoon fine sea salt
- ½ cup (120 ml) milk
- 1 large egg
- ⅓ cup (70 g) sugar
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
for the cream cheese honey glaze:
- 4 oz. cream cheese, room temperature (½ of a 250 g/8oz pkg)
- ¼ cup (30 g) icing sugar (powdered sugar/confectioner's sugar)
- 1 teaspoon butterfly pea flower powder, sifted
- 2 tablespoons liquid honey
- ¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 24 blueberries and small edible flowers or small mint leaves
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400℉ (200℃). Grease the wells in two 12-hole mini donut pans, using baking spray, or softened butter and a pastry brush.
- Melt the butter and set it aside to cool slightly.
- In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, butterfly pea powder, nutmeg, and salt. Whisk to combine.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, sugar, melted butter, and vanilla.
- Make a well in the dry ingredients. Pour in the beaten egg mixture, and stir to combine. Allow the batter to rest at room temperature for 20 minutes (to allow the blue colour to fully dissolve and the flour to hydrate.
- Scrape the batter into a piping bag with a ½-inch round tip or into a heavy-duty ziptop bag, then cut off one corner to make a ½-inch hole.
- Pipe the batter into rings in the wells of the mini donut pans, filling them each only half full.
- Bake for 6-8 minutes, until the donuts are dry on top, just golden at the edges, and spring back when lightly touched.
- Tip the pan over onto a cooling rack to let the donuts fall out of the pan. Leave to cool completely, then frost with the Cream Cheese Honey Glaze and decorate with a blueberry and small edible flowers on each one.
To make Cream Cheese Honey Glaze:
- Beat the softened cream cheese with an electric mixer until it is smooth and lump-free (or beat it with a spoon).
- Sift in the icing sugar and butterfly pea flower powder with a small sieve. (The butterfly pea powder can be very lumpy if not sifted before adding.)
- Beat in the honey and vanilla until smooth, scraping the bowl often to incorporate all the ingredients.
- Makes 24 donuts, two inches in diameter (less if the donuts are larger).
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