Soft, light, & decadently healthy red velvet donuts – with a secret ingredient and NO food coloring!
Did you notice the theme with my most recent recipes?
I’ve been having fun trying healthier alternatives to food coloring, first with my Magical Rainbow Unicorn Dip, and now with these vibrant red velvet donuts. They are baked instead of fried, are free of refined sugars and food dye, and they are also safe for vegans. The homemade donuts come together with just a few minutes of work and are healthy enough to eat for breakfast.
♥ You won’t miss the food coloring and refined sugar!
When I think of red velvet, I immediately think of Sprinkles’ red velvet cupcakes, complete with a thick layer of cream cheese frosting.
But these donuts are so much better than that… mostly because donuts are so much better than cupcakes. You can eat them plain, or with chocolate glaze, or topped with melted coconut butter or my Healthy Cream Cheese Frosting.
If you want to do the chocolate glaze, either dip the finished donuts in melted chocolate (mixed with a little oil if desired for a smoother sauce) OR mix together 2 tbsp pure maple syrup, 2 tbsp melted coconut oil, and scant 3 tbsp cocoa powder and gently heat until it becomes a thin sauce.
Refrigerate to “set” the chocolate glaze. If you use the coconut-oil version, it’s best to store the donuts in the fridge because coconut oil melts at room temperature.
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More Healthy Donut Recipes:
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Homemade Blueberry Baked Donuts
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P.S. These healthy red velvet donuts would be perfect for Valentine’s Day breakfast!
Healthy Red Velvet Donuts
Adapted from Blueberry Baked Donuts
Red Velvet Donuts–Refined Sugar Free!
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp milk of choice
- 1 tsp white or apple cider vinegar
- 1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup pure maple syrup or agave or honey
- 3 tbsp beet juice – or see substitution note below
- 3 1/2 tbsp oil – If you don’t mind fat-free texture, you can use applesauce (35g)
- 1 cup flour, loosely packed (works with all-purpose, spelt, or gf all-purpose) (125g)
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking powder
Instructions
*If you don’t have beet juice, you can omit and increase the milk of choice to 1/4 cup and add natural red food coloring to achieve the red velvet color if desired. (They taste just as delicious without the food coloring too!)
Combine first 6 ingredients, and set aside. Grease a donut pan OR mini muffin pan, and preheat oven to 350 F. Stir together remaining ingredients, then pour wet into dry once oven is preheated, and stir until just evenly mixed. Don’t overmix. Bake 10-12 minutes (depending on flour used), or until donuts have risen and batter is no longer wet. Let sit 5 minutes before removing from the pan. Frost with a basic glaze (a chocolate glaze recipe is listed earlier in this post) or even straight-up coconut butter, which is my favorite!
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Link Of The Day:
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Thank you for the recipe! I am wondering why there it calls for vinegar when there is no baking soda in the recipe to react with it as a leavener (just baking powder which reacts to the oven’s heat). Some recipes use both the vinegar-soda combination and baking powder for a nice rise and tender crumb. Please advise – did you leave out the soda accidentally from the copy or is the vinegar there for another reason?
Tried them tonight with buckwheat flour, they turned brown, as if I had put cacao in the mix, and they are crumbly and sand like! LOL! Not the best of idea! Will try again with another flour, hope they turn out red ok moist! Oops!!!
These look amazing! I’ve just pinned it and I’m going to try making them for my Girlfriend tomorrow. Wish me luck, haha! Rich
Woah – these look amazing! And you’re right, perfect for a Valentines Day treat. I’ve also just seen a photo of your cauliflower crust pizza – I’m off to look at that recipe now! Thanks
Amazing recipe as always, Katie! The beet looks absolutely vibrant in each donut!!
Katie, I love your blog and troll it at least once a day. 🙂 I made these donuts using gluten-free all purpose flour due to having an allergy. They taste amazing, but as they baked, I noticed the beet juice colored disappeared. When I pulled them out, they were just the normal brown color. Do you think this is due to the fact that I used gf flour? Please keep the amazing recipes coming!
I misread the instructions and put in a tablespoon of vinegar instead of a teaspoon. Let me tell you, the extra vinegar is NOT a good idea. Now that I see what I did wrong, I will try it again…correctly.
I made these to the T and they were oh my goodness!!!! delicious!. I used a combination of flour: 2/3 cup millet, almost 1/3 cup brown rice flour, finished the cup with potato starch. It worked as a charm. I used food coloring, and I dipped them in the chocolate/coconut butter/honey dip suggestion from the top of the page. Wow. Shame I have only one pan, so I made only one batch, which lasted me less than a day. I’m making more today. And ordering more doughnut pans! Thank you, Katie!
I’ve never used beets so I am wondering, where or how do you get beet juice?
You can buy it at whole foods, walmart, online (jet.com, vitacost, amazon), sometimes target, or just buy beets and boil and puree them. (Or just google how to make your own beet juice)
I’m a donut lover. The red donut stole my heart. A great recipe.
I would like to see the calorie count on ALL of the recipes.
………………. but, I LOVE this recipe!!
Is the white glaze in the last photo coconut butter? Thanks!