Home-made lemon raspberry donuts topped with tangy-sweet lemon glaze. These Baked Lemon Raspberry Donuts combine soft fluffy lemon sponge filled with sweet raspberries and topped with tangy lemon glaze. They are incredibly easy to make and make the perfect treat for snack time or even breakfast.
In the spring and summertime, I’m a huge fan of lemon desserts. (Who am I kidding, all year round!!) That tangy, sweet taste that livens up any baked treat. Amazing right??! Teamed with juicy raspberries in the form of baked airy lemon sponge donuts...the combination is magic. Lemon and raspberries match each other like orange and chocolate. A perfect pairing.
The best bit, these donuts look super cute but are so easy to make. Let's have a look how...
Ingredients needed
- Unsalted butter
- Caster sugar
- Eggs- binds the ingredients and add richness
- Lemon zest and juice - double whammy of tang!
- Plain flour & baking powder- for a light and airy sponge
- Salt
- Sour cream- provides moisture
- Fresh raspberries
How do we make these baked donuts?
Make the sponge
These baked lemon raspberry donuts are surprisingly quick and easy to make. No more than 15 minutes to get them in the oven, then just over ten minutes baking. The hardest part is waiting for them to cool before glazing!
Pre-heat your oven to 180C (350F). Grease x2
STEP 1: Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
STEP 2: Pour in the eggs slowly and mix in.
STEP 3: Add the lemon zest, juice and sour cream and mix in.
STEP 4: Fold through the dry ingredients until just combined.
STEP 5: Then fold through the raspberries until just combined. Raspberries are quite fragile, and some may break up. But don’t worry, you’ll get a raspberry-marbled look in the sponge. Take a look at the unglazed, baked donuts in the picture above.
STEP 6: Spoon the batter into your piping bag, snip a 1cm hole at the point and pipe batter into the donut rounds. Piping it into the donut pan is a whole lot easier and less messy than spooning it in. I very much recommend it.
STEP 7: From there, we bake, then cool, then glaze and finally decorate with freeze-dried raspberries. Pretty simple, right? And I think they look awesome...definitely looks like more effort than a quick 30 minutes. Shhhh, I won’t tell. It’s our secret, ok?!
The Glaze
2 ingredients. That’s it. That’s all you need to top your perfect baked lemon raspberry donuts.
STEP 1: Whisk the icing sugar and lemon juice until smooth. The glaze should coat the back of a spoon.
STEP 2: Then it's ready for dunking those donuts and glazing them up. Add a little sprinkle of freeze-dried raspberries. and you are done. Tuck in!!
If you wanted an alternative to lemon glaze, you could mash a couple of raspberries and mix them in with the icing sugar (omitting the lemon juice). You’ll have the prettiest pink raspberry glaze on your hands.
For more recipes with lemon:
📖 Recipe
Baked Lemon Raspberry Donut Recipe
Ingredients
Lemon raspberry batter
- 115 g unsalted butter
- 100 g granulated sugar
- 3 large eggs, beaten
- 250 g plain flour (all-purpose)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon fine salt
- 80 g sour cream
- 2 unwaxed lemons, zested
- 60 ml lemon juice
- 125 g fresh raspberries
Lemon Glaze
- 200 g powdered icing sugar (confectioners sugar), sifted
- 30 ml lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon freeze-dried raspberries, to decorate, optional
Instructions
For the lemon raspberry batter
- Preheat your oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease the moulds of x2 donut pans.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer with the beater attached, add the butter and sugar and cream until pale and fluffy, about five minutes.
- With your beaters on medium-high, pour the beaten eggs In a slow, steady stream, stopping halfway to scrape the sides of the bowl. Beat until eggs are well mixed in, and then stir through the sour cream, lemon zest and lemon juice.
- Fold through the flour, baking powder and salt until just combined. Then gently fold through the raspberries until just combined. (Don’t worry if the raspberries break up a bit.)
- Spoon the batter into a piping bag and snip a 1 cm hole at the point. Pipe batter into each of the donut holes. Don’t overfill as they will rise. Use a wet finger to smooth the dough where the ends meet.
- Bake for 12-14 minutes until a skewer inserted into the sponge comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for 10 minutes before turning out on a wire rack to cool completely.
Lemon glaze
- Add the powdered icing sugar and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice into a medium bowl and whisk until combined. The glaze needs to be able to coat the back of a spoon. Add more lemon juice, one teaspoon at a time if it’s too stiff.
- Dip the donuts into the glaze and decorate some with freeze-dried raspberries whilst the glaze is wet, then set aside for the glaze to harden. Serve immediately.
All recipes are developed and tested in Metric grams. I strongly recommend that you bake using digital scales for a more accurate result. I have provided a conversion to US customary in the recipe but please note that I haven’t tested using this method.
Notes
Nutrition
Fatema
So pretty- these look gorgeous. What kind of flower did you use to decorate?
Emma
Hi Fatema- they were some kind of blossom during Springtime here in the UK.
Kat
Hi, I’m planning to make these for a staff picnic and can’t wait - they look incredible! I was planning on using mini donut pan (https://www.nordicware.com/products/mini-donut-pan/), and was wondering if you’d change the bake time or anything when baking these?
Thank you!
Emma
Hi Kat - they do look like very mini donuts- so I would check at the 10-minute mark and go from there keeping an eye on them. Emma
Annette
Could these be made as mini bundt cakes? I don't have a donut pan.
Annette
Simple, tasty and visually wonderful. The freeze dried topping is perfect (bought at Trader Joe's).