Pillowy-soft, ultra chocolatey, and incredibly moist! Count on these glazed gluten free and keto chocolate donuts to become a favorite treat (at just 2g net carbs a piece!).
Gluten Free & Keto Chocolate Donuts
Glazed & Suuuuper Soft!
These guys are the chocolate version of our pillowy-soft keto donuts. They’re definitely just as good, and if anything a little easier (courtesy of the added cocoa).
Turns out the secret lies in making an easy keto choux pastry, which I first used for our keto churros. And with a couple small modifications, you’ve got some truly amazing baked donuts at your disposal!
You can also pretty much do your topping of choice. I love a good classic glaze, but brushing them with melted butter and sprinkling with cinnamon ‘sugar’ is sooo delicious too.
The Method
The batter for these keto donuts is essentially a choux pastry (used to make anything from eclairs to gougeres). But this is just a fancy way of saying that you first boil together water with sugar, butter (or coconut oil) and salt. Adding in the flour and cooking it until it forms into a ball. And step three, mixing in the eggs off the stove. We also add a bit of baking powder at the end for extra rise.
Now when you mix in the eggs the dough will be very stiff, and given that we’re also adding in baking powder, the job is best done with a hand-mixer here. The final dough should be very elastic (courtesy of the eggs and xanthan gum).
For the shaping you’ll need a pastry bag (disposable ones are terrific) or simply use a thick plastic bag. You don’t need a tip here, just to pipe it out onto a donut pan as smoothly as you can (so they rise evenly).
The Chocolate
You’ll want to use a Dutch-processed alkaline cocoa here. As there’s baking powder involved, using cacao won’t give the same results (at all!).
In terms of brands, my favorite will forever be Valrhona, known to be one of (if not the) best cocoas in the world.
The Flours
I like a mixture of super fine almond flour and coconut flour best. Add a touch of psyllium husk and xanthan gum, and we’re golden.
And don’t skip the psyllium husk. It helps retain moisture, create structure (i.e. it’s highly responsible for the killer crumb). And it just so happens to be a killer source of fiber.
Borrowed from molecular cooking, xanthan gum is the binding agent which makes your toothpaste jelly-like (and your cream cheese, well cream cheese-like). And it’s also the most common gluten-replacer in gluten free baking. And there’s absolutely no skipping it here!
In all honesty, no substituting anything here. You really do need the full combo of grain free flours to get the choux just right.
In terms of brands, for the almond either Anthony’s or WellBees work great. Both are super fine grinds. And for the coconut, we always favor Anthony’s.
The Sweetener
This choux pastry to make the donuts is very lightly sweetened (and fairly bland solo), think just a couple tablespoons. But this is really to accommodate for the glaze or topping of choice. So to sweeten the keto choux pastry itself you can use erythritol (Lakanto or Swerve), xylitol or allulose.
And if just grain free, coconut sugar is your best bet here. And of course, raw sugar works great too.
If you’re opting for the glaze, which comes highly recommended, your best options for no aftertaste are allulose or xylitol. But they must be powdered.
So get your blender out, make sure it’s completely dry, and process your sweetener of choice until powdered. Just make sure you wait a few moments for the dust to settle before opening the blender or food processor.
Or you can always grab a bag of powdered erythritol (Lakanto or Swerve).
And if using xylitol, make sure to be careful if you have a pup around the house, as it’s highly toxic to the little guys! 🐕
Glazed!) Gluten Free & Keto Chocolate Donuts
Ingredients
For the keto donuts
- 64 g almond flour
- 28 g coconut flour
- 1 tablespoon psyllium husk ground
- 1 teaspoon xanthan gum
- 240 ml water
- 57 g grass-fed unsalted butter or coconut oil
- 3 tablespoons erythritol or xylitol*
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 3 eggs lightly beaten
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 30 g cocoa powder
For the glaze
- 50 g xylitol powdered
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 42 g grass-fed unsalted butter melted (or 2 TBSP coconut oil/ghee)
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2-3 tablespoons heavy, sour or coconut cream at room temperature
- 1-3 teaspoons hot water optional, as needed
Special equipment
- pastry bag or plastic bag
- donut pan **
Instructions
- See recipe video below for guidance! You'll be adding in the cocoa powder along with the baking powder.
- Preheat oven to 390°F/200°C. Grease and dust with cocoa powder a donut pan.
- Whisk together in a medium bowl almond flour, coconut flour, psyllium husk and xanthan gum. Set aside.
- Heat up water, butter, sweetener and salt in medium pot (or Dutch oven) until it just begins to simmer. Lower heat to low and add in flour mixture, mixing constantly to incorporate. Continue to cook and stir until the dough pulls away from the pan and forms into a ball, 1-3 minutes.
- Transfer dough back to the bowl and allow to cool for 5 minutes. The dough should still be warm, but not hot enough to scramble the eggs.
- Add in one egg at a time, mixing with an electric mixer until fully incorporated. Mix in vanilla extract, baking powder and cocoa. The final dough should be very elastic.
- Spoon dough into a piping bag or plastic bag (no tip needed). Cut out bottom of piping bag 2 cm (3/4 inch) wide. Pipe out dough onto donut pan. Wet your finger tip and smooth out where the ends meet (for a more even rise). Bake for 20-25 minutes, checking in on them at minute 15 for over-browning and covering with a foil dome if need be (we didn't find it necessary!). Allow to rest in the pan for 10 minutes before removing and cooling on a rack before glazing. However, if you're doing a coating rather than a glaze, brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon 'sugar' right out of the oven.
- For the glaze, sift powdered sweetener onto a bowl and whisk in the salt. Mix in the melted butter, vanilla extract and cream of choice (I love sour cream!) a tablespoon at a time until desired consistency is reached. You can thin it out even further with a little hot water and dunk the entire donuts in it. Use your fingertip here to test for thickness! Oh, and if you're glaze splits (usually the result of a cold cream), use an immersion blender to get it silky-smooth. Glaze donuts by dunking them onto the glaze (if your tops came out a bit wonky, you can always use the rounder bottoms as your new 'tops'!).
- These are best enjoyed still warm and freshly glazed, but they keep quite well for a day or two stored in an airtight container in the fridge if they're glazed, or at room temp without it.
My family and I truly enjoyed this recipe. I made it without chocolate as my father doesn’t like it. Even without the chocolate the donuts were great. Please keep up the good work.
Awesome to hear Ruth!!
These donuts are so yummy. Chocolate cake donuts have always been one of my favorites, and now I can have them again. Thanks so much for this delicious recipe.
My pleasure Gina 🙂
Another home run recipe from Paola! I appreciate all the specific instructions and explanations and the varieties!
On another note I was so very sad to hear of your recent health challenges. I am and praying you are continuing to recover completely.
With love and gratitude, Pamela
Awesome to hear Pamela, and thank you so much for your kind message. Happy to report that I’m walking more and more every day, such a blessing 💪🏼🥰
Hi! I only currently have natural cocoa on hand. I was wondering if I could use it with baking soda instead of Dutch cocoa and baking powder, or would that not work in this recipe? I suppose I could just run to the store but just curious.. lol
I know you said there’s no substituting the flours, but what if you just can’t do coconut flour? Is there anything that could be replaced or attempt to modify? Thanks!
Oat fiber might work (grverslly a pretty good sub 1-1)… but tbh I haven’t tested so cannot guarantee xo!
Paola-I LOVE YOU!!!
You are a Keto Genius! These are soooo good! Thank you,thank you, thank you!
You make it so easy for us to stay on this WOE….I cannot thank you enough for continually posting absolutely amazing recipes!
Awwww Rita you’re too sweet! So happy you enjoyed them so much, it’s truly my absolute pleasure to share my goodies with y’all! Big big kiss!
What size eggs do you normally use in your recipes? Large?
Yes! Standard for baking xo!
Hi there Paola and others – love the recipes and have made many with success! But encountered a problem yesterday – had run out of powdered swerve and my attempt to make powdered sugar was a disaster. It just didn’t work. Could someone please advise me about blending granulated sweeteners to make powdered sugar – I have a great blender but it didn’t convert the granules to powder, and, I had to add practically the whole bag to get the sweetener level up to the blades. My blender is the Vitamix 7500 Blender, Professional-Grade, 64 oz. Low-Profile Container -take a look – it is this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LQT6UB2/ I have had it a year and love it to make smoothies, soups, whipped cream! What did I do wrong? Thanks in advance!
You need a small electric coffee grinder to transform granular sweeteners into powdered. Thrift stores often have them for $5.
I don’t have a donut pan. Would a muffin pan work?
Can you cook these without a donut pan?
Your can use a muffin pan too!