Gluten-free Donut Holes

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For the past five or six years now, we have been visiting the Green City Market in Chicago. One of the regular vendors there sells batches of fresh donut holes that he fries up to order. It became standard practice for us to make a bee-line straight for his stall and impatiently wave a five dollar bill in his direction while waiting for our turn to order. We would then wander the rest of the market while eating these sugary bits of fried dough, often burning the roofs of our mouths because we refused to wait for them to cool. Sometimes we would make a bit of a game out of them by trying to decide what sort of animal the shape of each one reminded us of (we seemed to end up with a lot of them that we thought looked like mice or bears).

After Chele was diagnosed with celiac disease, those trips just weren’t the same. While myself and Chele’s husband Chris were still free to partake, she was forced to simply be an observer. We still love going to the market (and hope to be able to get back there more often once COVID is no longer a concern), but it would be a lie to say we don’t miss that part. So when Chele ran across a suggestion on how to make gluten-free donut holes using an off-the-shelf pancake batter, I can’t even begin to put into words how eager she was to try it out.

The process of making the donut holes themselves worked perfectly. The batter fries up into perfect little round bites of dough if you are careful about scooping or pouring it into the oil (or crazy little blobs that might look like mice or bears or wombats if you are not). Since there was little to play with in the recipe for the batter itself (aside from getting creative with the shapes), we set our imagination spinning on what to flavor them with. Old standards like powdered sugar and cinnamon sugar work perfectly fine of course (and what self-respecting donut aficionado would turn their nose up at powdered sugar?), but if you have spent any time looking around this blog you already know that we aren’t content with sticking to familiar territory. After a bit of experimenting, we came up with several additional flavored sugars that we enjoy rolling these donut holes in. (Yes, we are going to share them with you!)

Chele’s very first idea was quite simple on the surface, but it may just be our favorite: ginger sugar. The hit of sweetened spicy ginger is quite addictive, and it is an absolute snap to prepare if you have some powdered ginger on hand. My contribution started with a jar of Hibiscus Cinnamon Sugar from The Sugar Lab (aka Spice Lab) that I had kicking around in my spice cabinet. We initially added it straight on the donuts, which we generally liked, but agreed was a bit too strong. After blending it with additional sugar on a later batch, we knew we’d found the sweet spot. And finally, our third offering should also come as no surprise to followers of this blog: lemon lavender sugar. As we have expounded on several times now, we have a special place in our hearts for the lavender-lemon flavor combination. Chele took that brainstorm and came up with a lemon lavender sugar scrub that made for a fantastic addition to the line up.

So if you or anyone you know is eating gluten-free, but missing out on fried sweet treats like these, here is a simple answer! Try any or all of our variations, or experiment with your own combinations to find your new favorite! Of course if gluten isn’t a concern for you, our flavored sugar ideas will still make a fantastic addition to traditional wheat-based donuts, or pretty much any baked treat like cookies or muffins.