Circus Animal Cookie Donuts

We told you we’d be back with another donut recipe! These cake donuts are just as easy to make as our last recipe was. We’re basically always going to use this recipe from now on and switch up the flavors and decorations on the donuts.

One of our all-time favorite snack cookies is Circus Animal cookies. We’ve absolutely loved them since we were young. They’re not just cute, they’re also really tasty. We’ve been wanting to use them for a blog recipe for awhile but didn’t know what to make, until now.

We love how the donuts turned out, however, we wish we could have found a pink dye that was identical to the cookie color. We used gel dye like normal, but our shade is more of a neon pink than the cool-toned pink of the cookie. Regardless, we WILL be making these again because they are fun in donut form. They also tasted better than our last donut recipe for some reason. It was a true win for us amateur bakers.

Ingredients: 

• One box dry cake mix (we used white cake mix)
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup water
• Donut pan
• Nonpareil sprinkles
• Donut cutter
• pink food coloring (we used a gel)

Directions: 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Grease your donut pan

Mix together cake mix, egg, oil & water in a large bowl. Slowly mix in food coloring until you achieve your desired color. We suggest using pink food coloring instead of red so you don’t have to worry as much about adding too much.

Fill a plastic bag with batter, cut off one of the corners and fill each well about half way full with donut batter

Bake for 12-14 minutes

Let donuts cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes. Remove & finish cooling on a drying rack

Optional: Place in refrigerator to cool some more for approx. 10 minutes (this really helped our donuts come out of the pan easier)

Optional: To perfect donut holes, we used this donut cutter we had and just re-cut the holes after donuts were completely cooled to create a perfect shape.

Glaze Ingredients: 

• 1 Tablespoon butter
• 1.5 cups powdered sugar
• 2 Tablespoons milk
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Directions: 

Melt butter

Whisk in powdered sugar and milk – you can always add more milk if you want your glaze to be thinner

Dip the donut halfway into the glaze, then turn the donut sideways to allow extra glaze to run off

Add sprinkles to glaze then add the animal cookies. Let sit to completely dry.

After you let them dry for at least 30 minutes, donuts should be able to be moved and stacked however you’d like. We think these would be perfect to celebrate a birthday!

What type of donuts do you want us to make next?! 

xo Carli