My apple cider doughnut recipe is the result of me doing too many things at one time and not paying attention. So the story goes, I was trying to figure out if anyone had created a copycat recipe for the apple cider doughnuts from SkyTop Orchard in Flat Rock, NC. My research came up empty, though I did watch a local reporter make the doughnuts for a feature.

Devastated, I started flipping through recipes and googling “authentic apple cider doughnuts”. Sidenote: I am one of those people who has 57 tabs open on every single device I own. After much hand-wringing, I settled on the recipe from Jo Cooks because she used buttermilk in the dough, which made sense for the pillowy soft doughnuts. Before I decided on that recipe, I also read one from Damn Delicious, but remembered clicking out of it because it didn’t have buttermilk, or so I thought I clicked out of it.

Something's Wrong

Halfway through simmering apple cider I realized something was wrong. My brain was yelling at me-- if you have 1 cup of apple cider AND a ½ cup of buttermilk, that’s a LOT of liquid.

Somehow, I measured out dry ingredients from Jo Cooks and the wet ingredients from Damn Delicious. More backstory: I always measure out dry ingredients first even if the recipe puts them last (or god forbid doesn’t tell you to whisk the salt/baking powder/baking soda with the flour). This is how I ensure that I always get all of the leavening agents into the recipe. I started doing this after I forgot to put salt in a pound cake and felt nothing but sheer devastation at the loss of that poundcake.

Time to Problem Solve

So then I looked at the Jo Cook’s recipe again, and low and behold, that recipe only called for 1 cup of apple cider. Then I looked at the 3 cups of apple cider simmering on the stove. It was decision time, folks. I grabbed a sheet of paper and did a side by side comparison of the ingredients and quantities, and came up with a plan.

I kept the dry measurements from Jo Cooks, then I added a half cup of flour, because everything seemed too wet. The addition of the brown sugar from Damn Delicious, seemed like a good call, so it stayed. Finally, I had to let the buttermilk go. The whole reason I picked the Jo Cooks recipe to begin with, but I knew the batter would be way too wet to keep it and all of the cider.

The result...

The resulting dough was SO sticky. I ended up kneading extra flour into dough and then dividing the dough in half and freezing it for 15-20 minutes just to be able to cut them out. In summary, this was a hot mess up until the point when I started frying them.

Are they as good as the SkyTop version? Hell No. We are lucky they came out at all! I honestly had the lowest expectations-- but then my daughter, who only eats doughnuts with chocolate icing and sprinkles, inhaled a whole doughnut and gave me a thumbs up! This is a low bar, but in many ways still a triumph.

Recipe