Okay, so, I get that the words healthy and donut don’t exactly belong together. It’s the unhealthy amounts of sugar and butter and deep-fried goodness that makes a donut so great after all. BUT, I wanted to try to find a healthier alternative that was at least a “reduced guilt” option that would be the answer to any sweet tooth prayers. The secret weapon to make these donuts just a tad healthier than your average is the air fryer. Skipping the deep fryer immediately cuts the fat, so we’re gonna just go with less fat=healthy. We decided to top the donuts with some edible flowers because, why not? I’ve been on a bit of an edible flower kick as of late to garnish and dress up any recipe, like our Rose + Lavender Margarita’s from last month — it just gives off a fresh, pretty spring-feel.

the recipe

what you need for the donuts:

• Air Fryer, we used this one

• Stand Mixer

• 1 cup milk

• 2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar, plus 1 tsp

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1 egg

• 1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

• 3 cups all-purpose flour

• Oil Spray, coconut oil works best

For the glaze:

• 6 tbsp unsalted butter

• 2 cups powdered sugar

• 2 tsp vanilla extract

• 4 tbsp hot water, or as needed

• Edible Flowers

instructions for the donuts:

We used the recipe here from Plated Cravings and it worked perfectly!

instructions for the glaze:

1. While the donuts are in the Air Fryer, follow the instructions from the recipe above.

2. Once your donuts are ready and glaze is complete, dip the hot donuts in the glaze. We only dipped the top rather than submerging in an effort to reduce the total sugar per donut. We also made our donuts ahead of time, so they weren’t hot when we dipped them which worked as well!

3. Top with edible flowers to give your donuts a little spring face-lift.

4. Place on a wire rack set over a baking sheet to allow excess glaze to drip off.

5. Let glaze Harden for about 10 minutes.

Our photographer, Kimi, has been on a mission to try every fun air fryer recipe and jumped on the idea of finding a healthy-ish donut recipe for us to dress up with edible flowers. After “sampling” several of these during our shoot, we’d say this one was a win.

What other Air Fryer recipes have you tried?

Let us know in the comments!

Images by Kimi Domino.