sweet loaf donuts with glaze

These donuts are meant to be made with any sweet loaf recipe. I've used a very unique recipe for Sesame Banana Bread from my all time favorite cooking and recipe blog, 101 Cookbooks, written by Heidi Swanson (who I think happens to live in my neighborhood!). You can use any sweet loaf and glaze recipe you'd like. Some other ones that come to mind are lemon poppy seed, cranberry orange and zucchini breads. Those would all be wonderful.

I doubled the recipe to yield 30 donuts. I froze them and then brought them with us to Mendocino this past weekend, for the glorious weekend wedding of our beloved friends Will and Alexa, to share with friends at hungover breakfasts. I glazed them right before serving and they went quickly with morning coffee. Great recipe, especially if you like sesame seeds.

To get started, preheat your oven per your recipe. Butter and flour your pans (or spray with baking spray). Do the dry mix/wet mix thing for your batter. I used a pastry bag to fill the pans, squeezing the batter directly down into the pan cavities as I worked around each donut shape. The pastry bag ended up a mess at the end, along with my hands, but it was really helpful.

You need to watch your donuts VERY carefully when you get them in the oven. This recipe took only FIFTEEN MINUTES to bake. After ten minutes I moved the pans on the lower oven rack up to the upper oven rack, and moved the top ones down, so no one got too much heat. Five minutes later they were done. If I were to ever do a light bread, like lemon poppyseed, I would check them every five minutes from the get go, to be sure the bottoms wouldn't burn.

The glaze from the recipe I used was simple and tart. Equal parts brown and powdered sugar, thinned by lemon juice. I used an orange instead of a lemon and it was delightful. After glazing, even more sesame seeds get piled on top!

This is a great way to serve sweet loaf breads without having to slice them. Donuts win, again!