Green Tea Citrus Glazed Baked Doughnuts

Fluffy, partially whole grain, green tea citrus doughnuts, dipped in a grapefruit glaze, dusted with matcha. 

Disclosure: I’m proud to be a 2018 Unilever Agent of Change Masterclass member. As an original member of their inaugural class in 2015, Unilever brought back 11 members throughout the years to form the Master Class. Today’s post is sponsored by Unilever. 

Buying a doughnut pan was one of the best uni-tasking purchases I’ve made in the kitchen.  As much as I love an efficient, mostly minimal kitchen arsenal, there are sometimes you just need the key recipe tool to make your dreams a reality. 

Now don’t get me wrong, if I had to pick a doughnut varietal, I’m team yeast doughnut that’s fried all the way. But I’m also not buying a deep fryer and for that matter firing it up every time I have doughnuts on the brain. Which is the benefit of a good cake-like doughnut that’s baked. It’s like making a breakfast muffin but way more fun for everyone involved (for you, the person baking because the joy you get when you turn over a doughnut pan and see six perfect doughnuts is undeniable. But also, for the rest of you, the eaters, because doughnuts beat muffins 90% of the time). 

I’ve made this recipe and tweaked it several times over the past year or so for the blog and for brand clients to use. I love it because it’s for six doughnuts. One pan. No extra batter. No having to buy two doughnut pans. Which I guess leads us back to square one: Carlene loves an efficient kitchen, even when it is a uni-tasker pan of doughnuts.

This doughnut recipe is nice and light and will take you from summer with bright flavors, all the way through winter when it’s truly citrus season. The base is half whole wheat (a bit more fiber, but without making it too dry or too nutty in flavor) and uses a concentrate of Pure Leaf Iced Green Tea Citrus tea bags.

The glaze is grapefruit and the texture of the glaze is perfect: not too thin and runny and not too ‘frosting’. For a garnish, because you know we love a good garnish, I used Pure Leaf Matcha dusted on top. It’s not too in your face matcha flavor since it’s only on top instead of mixed into the doughnut where the green citrus tea is working its magic. And P.S. those Pure Leaf Matcha leaves are sourced from Rainforest Alliance Certified™ tea estates in Kagoshima, Japan. The matcha is also in individually wrapped sachets which is nice since you can open one for this recipe to use as the garnish and keep the rest sealed to preserve their flavor. 

The great thing about this doughnut recipe is you can definitely tweak it using other flavors of tea. Pure Leaf teas only use the highest quality tea leaves to let the authentic flavor of each tea variety shine through. You can even pick a single-source origin tea leaf from their Rainforest Alliance Certified™ tea estates in India, Kenya, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. For example, their hot Green Tea with Mint uses Indonesian gunpowder green tea with peppermint leaves for a refreshing taste that would be AWESOME with maybe a little bit of cocoa powder in a doughnut….(maybe this doughnut pan will get more use than I thought…I feel like I need to make that next). 

My point being: it’s is a great tea brand because as I learned from talking to their tea master, Alex White in June, (yes, the guy from the Pure Leaf commercials), they care A LOT about the sustainability efforts of their product and the quality of the tea. There’s no decision paralysis about worrying whether or not the brand tastes good, does good and doesn’t cost the earth. 

Green Tea Citrus Glazed Baked Doughnuts

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2  cup  white  whole  wheat  flour  
• 1/2  cup  all-purpose  flour  
• 1/2  cup  sugar  
• 1 1/2  teaspoons  baking  powder  
• 2 teaspoons lemon zest
• 1/2 C water
• 4 Pure Leaf Iced Green Tea Citrus, tea bags
• 4 Tablespoons unsalted  butter  
• 1 large egg  
• 1 teaspoon white  vinegar  

Glaze

• 2 teaspoons freshly squeezed grapefruit  juice (lemon will also work)
• 2 Tablespoons heavy cream
• pinch of sea salt
• 1 tablespoon melted butter
• 1 cup powdered sugar

Pure Leaf Matcha for garnish

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 with a rack in the middle. 

2. In a large bowl add flours, sugar, baking powder and zest. Whisk to combine. 

3. Pour water into glass measuring cup. Heat about 30 seconds in the microwave and Pure Leaf Iced Green Tea Citrus, tea bags to infuse for 4 minutes. Remove tea bags.  

4. In a small saucepan melt butter completely, then add Pure Leaf Iced Green Tea Citrus tea.

5. In a small bowl whisk egg. Use a spoon or ladle to add small amounts of the hot tea and butter to the egg dish, whisking constantly to temper the egg so as not to curdle. 

6. Once egg has been whisked with a few spoonfuls of hot liquid, add back into small saucepan. Add vinegar and whisk once more. 

7. Remove from heat and whisk wet ingredients into dry ingredient bowl until lump free. The batter should be quite thick. 

8. Spoon batter in to ungreased doughnut pan, filling each about halfway full. 

9. Bake 12-15 minutes, rotating half way through. Doughnuts are done when a toothpick can be inserted and removed cleanly. 

10. Invert onto a cooling rack and cool completely before glazing.

11. To make glaze, add ingredients (except the Pure Leaf Matcha) to a bowl and whisk to combine so there are no lumps. Dip each cooled doughnut, domed side down into glaze and allow to set on a baking sheet. 

12. To garnish, use a fine mesh sieve and dust matcha on top.