Krispy Kreme, Dunkin Donuts and your local coffee shop have officially started with their pumpkin donuts for the season. But I bet we could make delicious pumpkin donuts too!

I tried out 3 different pumpkin donut recipes and wanted to share my results with y’all. From easy to medium to hard or 5 mins to 15 mins to 3 hours, whatever your comfort level, let’s try pumpkin donuts.

Easy Pumpkin Donuts

All you need is a tube of Pillsbury southern homestyle biscuits and use the back of a piping tip to cut a hole and fry them up.

Fill a Dutch oven with vegetable oil and preheat it to 350°F. I used an infrared thermometer to easily achieve the result. They only take a few minutes, flipping over part way through and then use a metal skimmer to retrieve them from the oil, drain in the pot and put on a stack of paper towels to remove excess oil.

Then I just made a quick pumpkin spice sugar coating to toss the donuts in. I didn’t measure this, I just added some sugar and pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon to a bowl and adjusted it to my personal taste preference. I prefer a more cinnamon forward pumpkin pie spice, but you can keep it simple.

I made a big batch because I used it for my medium pumpkin donuts too. Just make sure when you toss your pumpkin donuts in the pumpkin spice and sugar mixture that you toss them shortly after they come out of the fryer. Let them cool on the paper towels for just about 30 seconds or so, when they’re just cool enough to handle but still pretty warm almost hot, that way the sugar mixture is melted just enough to adhere to the donut itself, or it’ll just fall off.

These first easy pumpkin spice donuts so pretty! We loved them!

They’re denser than a regular yeasted donut but the saltiness of the biscuits really compliments the sugar mixture.

I’d 100% make them again, but next time I would want to try the pumpkin spice glaze I used for my expert donuts!

I used roughly the same recipe from KirbieKirbie’s Cravings for our Medium Pumpkin Donuts. Well, donut holes. These pumpkin spice donut holes are just self rising flour, pumpkin purée. I added 1 tsp each pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon. I ended up making my own self rising flour because I forgot to buy some. It’s just all purpose flour, baking powder and salt.

I started with the danish dough whisk and ended with my hands using black disposable gloves. I think my batter may have been not as wet as theirs, so maybe adding a little extra pumpkin purée or milk so that it scoops into the oil easier and has a lighter texture.

I also think it needs a little sugar too. Brown sugar would’ve given it a nice depth of flavor.

I also tossed these pumpkin donut holes in the same pumpkin spice, cinnamon and sugar mixture after drying/cooling on the paper towel for a few seconds.

I highly recommend this metal bowl set if you don’t already have some metal bowls. It is a nice set of different sizes for baking and cooking like this, they’re durable and also lightweight which makes it easier to lift them when they’re full of ingredients.

I think these pumpkin spice donut holes have some potential but need some tweaking for a perfect medium level pumpkin doughnut.

They also should be eaten same day.

Lastly, our Expert Pumpkin Spice Donuts are based off of Baking with Butter’s Recipe. I love using a food scale as often as I can with baking because it is such a science and the food scale is much more accurate.

I measured half the amount of pumpkin pie spice and made up the rest with cinnamon in my pumpkin donuts.

I also recommend a stand mixer for these pumpkin spice doughnuts.

Baking tip: when I leave doughs to rise, I cover them with these disposable shower caps because it gives them room to grow and easily stay in place because of the elastic bit.

I can’t tell you how much I’m in love with my flour duster. I use it for make pie crusts and yeasted doughs but it’s also perfect for powdered sugar too for finishing desserts like my Summer Berry Mountain Pies.

Then just roll out the pumpkin doughnut dough.

I don’t have a donut cutter, so I just use a glass

And then again with the piping tip for the center of the donuts (or I’ve used a shot glass in the past too).

Now for the pumpkin spice donut glaze, I did the same thing as the pumpkin pie spice cinnamon sugar mixture but with powdered sugar and milk. The original recipe calls for a maple glaze so you could also make that instead.

I whisked together powdered sugar, pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon, then added vanilla extract and started adding milk, just a little at a time until I reached the desired consistency.

If you accidentally add too much milk, just add more powdered sugar.

Again, preheat oil in a Dutch oven to 350°F until golden brown.

Strain

These pumpkin donuts should also be dipped in glaze after they’re just cool enough to handle. The warmer that they are, the more the glaze will soak in just enough to give it the classic glazed donut texture. I didn’t let too much glaze drizzle off before turning them over so that some glaze dripped over the side because more glaze is always better.

These pumpkin spice donuts were obviously the most delicious pumpkin donuts on our pumpkin donut journey.

They were a bit denser than a typical yeasted donut because of the pumpkin purée but they were so yummy! A big hit with the family!

I’d love to try a yeasted donut with just pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon, no pumpkin purée with this same pumpkin spice cinnamon glaze. Is the pumpkin purée always necessary for a pumpkin spice donut?

Be sure to watch my pumpkin spice donut video where I show making all three pumpkin spice donuts and give even more opinions on the taste test.

What’s your favorite pumpkin spice recipe? I’d love to try it!

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