Baked matcha donuts are deliciously gingery, and secretly not so bad for you. Go ahead, make 'em for a weekday breakfast.
I’ve been trying to eat better lately, indulging in fewer sweets and upping my vegetable game. Not going to lie, though — for someone who grew up eating pretty much every kind of junk food there is, this a long-term battle. I want to have my whole family eating better for the sake of our collective health, but who am I to deny my children the utter joy of peeling off the chocolate from a Swiss Cake Roll to eat it bit by glorious bit?
Along those same lines, whenever my sweet older son gets a sparkle in his eye and asks if we can have donuts for breakfast, I just throw my hands up in the air and give in. After all, I love donuts, and I have fond memories of big boxes of those frosted beauties showing up on weekends when we had family visiting. So donuts are about family, in a way.
Now, I tend to bake donuts rather than fry them, partially because I don’t want to make a huge mess and partially because I’m too lazy. Baked donuts are ready to go just as quickly as muffins are, but have that special panache that comes by virtue of simply being called donuts.
While strawberry donuts and chocolate avocado mini donuts are old family favorites, I wanted to go for something different this time. Matcha tea has been all the rage among foodies lately, and the bright green powder is excellent to cook with. Just a little bit is all that’s needed for flavor and lovely color.
To pump these baked matcha donuts up a bit, I topped them with a glaze made with ginger juice. You might have had ginger juice in a smoothie or from the juice bar, but you can add it to other recipes for that distinctive kick.
To make the ginger juice, peel the ginger, then grate it finely. Take the grated ginger and press it through a fine sieve to extract the juice. You can also put it into a square of cheesecloth and squeeze the juice through. It works best if you prepare a lot of ginger at once — while you only need 2 teaspoons for this recipe, you’d be surprised at how many other recipes you’ll be adding it to. You can also find commercially prepared ginger juice in many natural and gourmet grocery stores.
The best part of these baked matcha donuts? They pass the kid test, with both of my children gobbling down the donuts as soon as they were ready. So I can rest easy knowing that we all ate a little better, and continued the family donut tradition.
Check out these other donut recipes for more breakfast inspiration.
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