I love Instagram photo challenges. Not only are they super fun, but they help me keep my feed populated by giving daily photo prompts.
Mostly I’ve participated in sewing photo challenges, but this month I decided I would play along with Max & Rosie’s food photo challenge.
The Buttercream Blonde’s Cookies n’ Cream Doughnuts
Max & Rosie’s food photo challenge is all about challenging yourself in the kitchen and experiment with different recipes. One such recipe was The Buttercream Blonde’s Cookies n’ Cream Doughnuts.
These doughnuts looked amazing and the recipe was pretty straight forward. Besides what could be better for brunch than doughnuts.
My Cookies & Cream Doughnuts
For my cookies & cream doughnuts I followed The Buttercream Blonde’s recipe pretty close with a few minor changes.
First off, as I usually do with all recipes, I made substitutions for sugar-free ingredients when possible, such as using Splenda Brown Sugar blends.
Also for this recipe you are going to need a doughnut pan. To get your batter into the pan smoothly and to create the perfect doughnut shape you’ll want to use a frosting bag, or ziplock bag. Simply pour your batter into the bag, snip the end and pipe the batter into each doughnut round
- 1 - 1/2 cup all purpose flour
- 3/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1/3 cup Splenda Brown Sugar Blend
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 eggs
- 3/4 cup milk (I used Lactaid Chocolate Milk)
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 Tbsp vinegar
- 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
- 10 Murray Sugar-free Sandwich Cookies (crushed finely)
- 6 oz of White Chocolate Chips
- 5 additional Murray Sugar-free Sandwich Cookies (crushed finely)
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease your donut pan.
- In a large bowl, mix together flour, cocoa powder, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
- In a separate bowl, whisk eggs, milk, oil, vinegar, and vanilla extract.
- Carefully combine wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Once well mixed, fold crushed cookies into the batter.
- Pour batter into frosty/ziplock bag and pour into each doughnut round in the pan.
- Fill each round about ¾ full. Bake for 10 minutes. Set doughnuts aside to cool.
- While doughnuts cool, melt 6 oz of white chocolate chips in microwave.
- Dip doughnuts in white chocolate, top with remaining crushed cookies.
Murray Sugar-Free Cookies
Instead of Oreos I used Murray sugar-free sandwich cookies.
Murray sugar-free cookie brand has a wide selection of sugar-free cookie alternatives. These are a great alternative when on a restricted diet, such as my hubby who can’t digest sugar.
In my Key Lime Pie recipe video, I mentioned that the Murray sugar-free shortbread cookies make for a great sugar-free alternative to a graham cracker crust.
Chocolate Milk in a Pinch
Besides using sugar-free ingredients I also used lactose free milk. Both me and my hubby have a lactose intolerance. As a substitution in baking I use Lactaid milk for all my baking.
Lactaid also makes chocolate milk but it’s not always available at the store. So, whenever I spot it I make sure to get myself some.
As I prepared this particular recipe I went to get the milk and suddenly discovered we were out of milk, but we still had chocolate milk.
Since these were chocolate doughnuts I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to use the chocolate Lactaid milk as a substitution.
Mind you that, while my main ingredients were sugar-free there was sugar in the chocolate milk. However, since I was going to top the whole thing with white chocolate (which also has sugar) I figure a little bit wouldn’t kill us.
Cookies & Cream Goodness
I’ve never been a huge cookies & cream person, but goodness, these doughnuts were amazing.
My hubby isn’t a big chocolate person nor does he often care for any kind of frosted topping, so I wasn’t sure if he’d even like these. Turns out he loved them!
They look like some custom bakery doughnuts, yet they were super easy to make. In fact I can’t wait to make them again.
These look INCREDIBLE!!! Yum to the nth degree and then some! I’m a huge fan of just about anything cookies and cream and am honestly thinking that I might need to invest in a doughnut pan now (haven’t seen them around here, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t to be found around parts) and try to whip up a GF version. Thank you for the scrumptious dessert inspiration, my friend.
xoxo ♥ Jessica
Thank you Miss Jessica, they were incredible! I use my doughnut pan at least once a month to make homemade doughnuts. I believe you can get it on Amazon for around $12. If you do make these you’ll have to send me a picture, I’d love to see how your GF version turns out.