Make Your Own Donuts At Home With Pancake Mix

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You might think making homemade donuts is quite the feat, but a boxed ingredient that might already be in your pantry makes the task much easier. All it takes to whip up homemade donuts similar to your go-to local bakery is pre-packaged pancake mix. Sure, it's not as easy as walking into a donut shop, but sometimes homemade is best — even with a store-bought instant ingredient. 

To get started, you'll need the core ingredient, and luckily, we have you covered with our ranking of store-bought pancake mixes from worst to best (hint: King Arthur Baking Company took the top spot). Then, all it needs is milk for the batter and plenty of your go-to neutral oil for deep-frying the donuts. You might also add eggs or sugar to the mixture. 

You can expect the texture of these donuts to be fluffy, similar to pancakes. Once the batter is shaped and cooked, the donuts can be customized with your favorite toppings.

There are various ways to make donuts with pancake mix, but we'll stick to the easiest technique. For every 3 cups of instant pancake mix, use 1 cup of milk. This should produce around eight donuts, but will vary depending on your desired size. The dough should be shaggy, and it's important not to over-mix it, because that will result in chewy donuts. If you want to make blueberry or chocolate chip donuts, fold some of those into the batter before forming the donuts. 

There are different ways to form the donuts. One method is to use round cookie cutters or ring molds to cut out the donut shape, then use a smaller cutter to make the hole in the center. There are also a couple of methods you can use if you are baking your donuts rather than frying, which is the preferred option if you want to avoid an oily mess. With a donut mold pan, you can pipe or spoon the batter into the molds. Or, grab your muffin pan, and cut aluminum foil to fit the holes. Before placing the foil pieces in the pan, use your finger to jut out the center of each piece, then pipe around it to create a hole in the middle of the donuts. The donuts should bake for 10 to 15 minutes between 325 and 375 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Icing, sprinkles, candies, or a dusting of sugar will certainly make your pancake donuts taste and look better. You could also make the glaze in our homemade glazed donuts recipe, or use the cinnamon-sugar topping from our easy apple cider donuts recipe.