Baked Banana Donuts With Chocolate Hazelnut Glaze

With a title such as this, I probably don’t need to extol the virtues of why baked banana donuts with chocolate hazelnut glaze should top your list for breakfast this week. Or every week, as I might find happening in my kitchen… but only because my banana trees (or, more accurately, banana plants) have been bursting with more bananas than I can count!

It seems like every week, there’s a new bunch that will emerge from the jungle known as my garden, and once 2 or 3 bananas start ripening on a bunch, all 20 or 30 (or 40 or 50!) of them will turn yellow by the time I blink.

My hubs (the premier baker in this house, believe it or not) has been cranking out banana bread, banana muffins, bananas foster, and frozen banana ice cream like no other, but I was starting to get banana’ed out. Almost. Not yet. Not until I tried a little experiment with my donut pan, a recipe inspired by the hubs’ banana bread and the ooey-gooey banana pancake stacks slathered in Nutella at my local breakfast joint.

Banana and Nutella together is a no-brainer. Except I’m not down with the ingredients in Nutella, so I use Justin’s Chocolate Hazelnut Butter instead — what I consider to be a more healthful version. You could also make your own quite easily with roasted hazelnuts and chocolate chips whipped together in a food processor. Whichever way you go, try not to lick up all the glaze before it’s actually on the donut!

Baked Banana Donuts With Chocolate Hazelnut Glaze

Makes 6 donuts

Ingredients

For the Batter
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1/2 cup mashed very ripe banana
1/4 cup sour cream

For the Glaze
1/4 cup chocolate hazelnut butter
1/8 cup milk

Method

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.

In another bowl (I use a 2-cup Pyrex bowl for easy measuring), whisk together the buttermilk, butter, vanilla extract, and egg.

Wet goes into dry! Stir until well combined.

Fold in the mashed banana, making sure it’s evenly distributed in the batter (as it’s hard to tell with the color). Stir in the sour cream.

Lightly oil your donut molds and fill each well with batter.

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into a donut comes out clean. Remove the pan from the oven and let it cool completely.

While you wait, make the glaze by whisking together the chocolate hazelnut butter and milk (I find this easiest done with a fork) until the consistency is creamy and smooth.

Fit a baking rack over a cookie sheet, then flip your donut pan over it to release the donuts.

Dip each donut into the glaze and let it drip dry on the baking rack. It takes a while to set and never fully hardens like a sugar glaze, so these donuts don’t exactly travel well… which is all the more reason to scarf them down at home!