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Whether you’re trying to recreate some childhood recipes or craving a quick comfort dessert, making donuts out of biscuits is where it’s at!

You don’t have to burden yourself with a long list of baking ingredients at the grocery store to achieve fluffy and scrumptious results. With the one canned ingredient, your donuts will come out in about 15 minutes.

You can get creative with the fillings by injecting custard into the fried dough balls or sticking to the traditional sweet, shiny glaze.

Without further ado, here’s how to make donuts out of biscuits!

What You’ll Need

Rather than read through a long list of ingredients to make homemade donuts, this recipe only calls for two main components: biscuits and vegetable oil.

Ingredients

1 can of biscuits
Vegetable oil (fills your pot)

Equipment

Frying pot
Thermometer
Wire racks
Paper towels
Cookie cutter

6 Steps to Make Donuts Out of Biscuits

This biscuit recipe is all for convenience and much less clean-up time. Here’s how to start:

Step 1: Prepare a Plate

Start by grabbing a wire rack and lining it with paper towels. This is where you’ll place your donuts after being fried in the oil.

Step 2: Work on Your Toppings and Fillings

Now, you need to decide on what type of toppings you’ll add to your biscuit donuts. Most recipes use a traditional sugar and cinnamon mix. That coating typically mixes half a cup of sugar with one tablespoon of cinnamon.

Nonetheless, you can get creative. Here are some ideas:

Glaze Base: Create the base by whisking one and a half cups of powdered sugar and two tablespoons of milk.
Crunchy Nutty Bites: After soaking the donuts in a sticky glaze base, sprinkle a bunch of chopped nuts of your choice, such as almonds, cashews, and hazelnuts. Elevate the donut’s look with a smooth drizzle of caramel sauce on top.
Chocolatey Goodness: For a chocolate glaze, mix one cup of powdered sugar, six tablespoons of cocoa powder, five tablespoons of butter, and two tablespoons of hot water.
OG Powdered Sugar: This is the easiest topping of them all. You just need to dust the freshly fried biscuit donuts with a generous helping of powdered sugar.

Toppings aside, you can choose between plenty of filling options to take your donut biscuits to new flavor heights, including:

Custard Filling: Mix a quarter of a cup of cornstarch, half a cup of sugar, two large eggs, one egg yolk, two cups of milk, one tablespoon of vanilla extract, and four tablespoons of unsalted butter.
Vanilla Cream: In a bowl, whisk one cup and a half cups of whole milk, half a cup of sugar, a quarter cup of cake flour, four egg yolks, and six tablespoons of heavy cream.
Strawberry Jam: You can use commercial strawberry jam to keep things easy. Nonetheless for extra freshness, create your own by boiling together a quart of strawberries, half a cup of sugar, four teaspoons of cornstarch, and one teaspoon of lemon juice.

Step 3: Prepare the Dough

Take out the circle biscuits and lay them out. Use a cookie cutter or soda cap to create donut holes in each biscuit.

Pro Tip: Use the extra cut-out dough to make mini donut holes.

Step 4: Heat Your Oil

Using vegetable oil or other oil suitable for frying, fill up your pan to about half an inch. Turn the heat on to a medium or medium-high setting for approximately five minutes.

Place a thermometer in your oil and wait until the oil reaches 350℉ to 375℉. It should be hot enough to instantly flash-fry the donuts.

Otherwise, they could soak up too much oil and become too soggy.

Step 5: Fry the Donuts

Once the oil is hot enough, drop about two to three donuts. Flip over each one after about one to two minutes.

Each side should be a mouthwatering golden brown.

Step 6: Cool and Decorate the Donuts

After your donuts look fluffy with a crisp outer layer, take them out and place them on the previously prepared plate.

Allow them to get rid of all the excess oils for around three to five minutes. Now that you’re left with a blank canvas, it’s time to decorate and flavor your donuts to your heart’s content.

You can dust them with powdered sugar, pour a delectable chocolate sauce, or dip them in a strawberry-flavored glaze.

For an extra flavor boost, grab your piping bag and filling of choice.

You can inject all sorts of flavors into your biscuit donuts, whether you’re craving a creamy custard taste, tart strawberry jam bite, or indulgent chocolatey inside.

Tips When Making Donuts Out of Biscuits

While making your donut biscuits, here are a few tips worth considering:

Don’t Overcrowd the Pan

You could be tempted to plop in more than three donuts at a time for the sake of convenience, but that won’t work in your favor.

Instead, it’ll drop the oil’s temperature since you’re adding cool dough. If the temperature isn’t hot enough to flash-fry the donuts, they’ll only suck up more oil, leaving you with soggy results.

Try Air Frying

If you’re trying to lessen the oily load of the baked dessert, you can always opt for air frying the holed biscuits.

You can do so by lining your air fryer with oil-sprayed parchment paper. Then, place two biscuit donuts in and leave them in the appliance for about four to five minutes at 350℉.

Be sure to flip them halfway through to get an even golden brown layer on both sides.

Perfect Your Topping

Let’s be realistic here; biscuit donuts won’t exactly taste the same as the ones you get from a specialty store.

They won’t have the same rise or distinct rich taste. To compensate for this, you can work extra to perfect your glaze or toppings.

I suggest getting creative and adding mix-ins like M&Ms, sprinkles, or even crushed cookies and cereal.

Final Thoughts

Making donuts out of biscuits is one of the easiest dessert projects you’ll likely undertake. All it takes is separating your biscuits, cutting holes, and frying them in batches.

You can then decorate them to your heart’s content with tasty toppings like a mouthwatering simple glaze or a heartwarming sugar-cinnamon coating.

Either way, you’ll be making these donuts in no time with much fewer bowls to clean.

Sarah Bridenstine

Sarah is the founder of Baking Kneads, LLC, a blog sharing guides, tips, and recipes for those learning how to bake. Growing up as the daughter of a baker, she spent much of her childhood learning the basics in a local bakery.