4 Ingredient Chocolate Cake Mix Donuts

Chocolate cake mix donuts are so easy to make using any flavor and one of our favorite cake mix hacks ever! It’s an easy baking project you can do with your kids and a fun way to make baked donuts right at home with a few ingredients. Load them up with fun toppings for breakfast or dessert.

How to Make Chocolate Cake Mix Donuts

Using just 4 ingredients these doughnuts came out fantastic, and were fun to make with the kids. Top them with lots of candies and sprinkles to customize them however you’d like and they’re a great birthday party activity too!

We make cupcakes often, have made cookies too, and have even shared how to make brownies from cake mix but thought there had to be a way to make easy cake mix donuts so we gave it a go this afternoon. These are fun because not only are they super simple to mix together but there are tons of flavors to choose from.

How to Make Cake Mix Mini Donuts

My daughters and I made these together and they were really tasty + the consistency of cake donuts you would buy at the donut store! When we made peanut butter cookie brownies using cake mix and then thought using cake mix to make something else might be fun!

The sizing is up to you. There is a link below to a traditional round size but there is a mini version you can grab as well as one that is round for just donut holes.

Ingredients

1. Cake mix of your choosing or make homemade yellow cake mix
2. Eggs will make them thick and rich
3. Buttermilk makes them more tender than milk
4. Butter makes it rich

Equipment

1. Donut pan or mini pan
2. Pint size freezer baggies
3. Wilton melts (for chocolate “icing”) or melting chocolate chips in microwave can be done with a little coconut oil (helps it to melt smooth)
4. Variety of toppings (smashed Andes mints are amazing)
5. Medium sized bowl
6. Cooling rack so they can cool completely before frosting them
7. Plastic bag (freezer style) if you want to squeeze frosting on with a design, and to squeeze in your batter.

There are a LOT of different ways to glaze or frost doughnuts so use your imagination as far as that goes. You can use a hardened type of chocolate like we did here with candy melts. Those come in a rainbow of flavors and colors so they are appropriate for any holiday. Pair with sprinkles to stick on while still wet and have fun with it. We will share our favorite choices we made below.

How to Make Donuts Using Cake Mix

1. Mix together melted butter, eggs, buttermilk and cake mix. 
2. Add mixture to pint freezer bag and cut end off. 
3. Preheat oven to 350 which will take about 15 minuts to do.
4. Spray donut plan and squeeze mixture into pan (barely halfway full).
5. Bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes or until donut springs back when touched gently on top.

These come out just as rich as our Brownies from Devils food cake and will change the way you make dessert. We added gummy bears, Nerds, M&Ms, and some crushed Andes mints to ours because that is what we had in the cupboard. These really are a fun and easy baking project to do with kids because they bake quick and easy. 

Tips

• I suggest that you squeeze batter into your Donut pan using pint size freezer bags. Just cut the tip off and use it like a pastry bag of sorts.
• Then they will all have an equal amount of batter in each one.
• Of course you can splurge and buy pastry bags with a wide dip if you like but literally these do the same thing for a fraction of the price.

How to Glaze Homemade Donuts

For a REALLY easy vanilla extract glaze (like we do for our Strawberry cake in a mug, just whisk together water and powdered sugar until it is thick and the right consistency. That is it! You do want that one quite thick or it just slides all over the place and right off of the top. Making sure your baked goods are completely cooled will help with preventing that from occurring too though.

If you do want to add sprinkles or candies do so right after that so it sticks. Give it a good 10 minutes in a cool place to settle down and harden up a bit before picking them up unless you want to use a bunch of paper towels and wipes to clean up all the mess.

How to Make Cake Mix Donut Holes

As far as the shape and size these will turn out to be that really is determined by the pan you choose to use. There are tons of different ones out there online and at cake decorating stores. Holes are fun because you can make 4x what this will create whole. Of course they will all taste the same, the bake time is just different the larger you go.

If you want to make doughnuts from scratch here is an easy homemade donut holes recipes, these are fried.

The best part is how to decorate them though right?? Just like cute cupcakes everyone can make their own creations.

Another easy idea is to beat together some room temp. cream cheese with marshmallow creme and frost. Make sure you spray your donut pan so they will just slide out when they are done too or you may have a bunch of unhappy kiddos at the end. I just use Pam non stick spray in the pan lightly since it is already nonstick itself.

How to Make Cake Donuts with a Cake Mix

For the toppings you can melt chocolate chips, use frosting out of a tub, or the melt the Wiltons melts to dip the tops in once the donuts are cooled. This can be done in the microwave in 30 second intervals stirring in between so they don’t burn. Directions are on the back of the bags though.

Then add candies when chocolate/frosting is still wet and warm so they stick well. You can go all out during the holidays with gumdrops, crushed candy bars, even candy canes smashed work well with the peppermint chocolate combo theme.

Our fried peanut butter and jelly donuts are super yummy, as well as a few air fryer apple fritters for breakfast.

Can you fry cake mix donuts?

If you didn’t want to bake them you could easily fry as well. It is harder to do since the shape isn’t going to hold well though. You are better off squeezing in a circle and letting it fry that way in a sort of donut hole shape. Just mix same ingredients and pipe out of a freezer bag when oil is hot so it immediately sizzles and fries.

Other cake mix dessert recipes you’ll love

We do this with our Crinkle cookies recipe too with multiple colors.

If you do want to frost them you must allow them to cool, or at least a bit for 5-10 minutes so they are safer to hold in your hands. Melted chocolate is going to harden and stick the toppings on better but if you were hangry you could just dunk into a tub of frosting if you wanted too. Try our Cherry pineapple dump cake recipe next!!