These chocolate donuts are practically virtuous, packed with minerals, fibre, protein and vitamins. They contain no flour, are refined sugar free, and even have some sneaky veg chucked in for good measure. But don't worry, they still taste delicious!
- 70 g (½ cup) cacao powder (you can use cocoa powder but raw cacao is more mineral-packed)
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar or lemon juice
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 125 g (½ cup) almond butter* (or other unsweetened nut butter)
- 3 tablespoons rice syrup or xylitol or coconut sugar**
- 3-5 drops liquid stevia
- 3 eggs
- 150 g (¾ cup) sweet potato puree***
- 50 g (¼ cup) unsweetened applesauce***
- handful of chopped dark 85-90% chocolate or super dark/unsweetened chocolate chips, optional
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Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/gas 5. Blitz everything except the chocolate chips in a food processor or blender until smooth. Stir through the chopped chocolate, if using. Pour into doughnut moulds (or use a lined muffin tin if you don't have one) and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into a doughnut comes out clean. Allow to cool then serve. If you want to, these are great dipped into Greek yogurt as a glaze. For a more decadent treat with a little more sugar in it, dip into melted 85-90% dark chocolate for a chocolate glaze to make these triple-chocolate doughnuts!
*I like using homemade almond & sunflower seed butter or pure almond butter (I just replace the sunflower seeds with more almonds), but you can definitely use shop-bought, just check it's unsweetened like this one
**all of these options are refined sugar free, but if you want it to be totally sugar free, opt for xylitol, which is the only one not classed as a free sugar by the World Healthy Organisation (for fructose free, use xylitol or rice syrup)
***you can find my 5-minute veggie-loaded applesauce recipe here - I like to batch prep it, along with batch-baking plenty of sweet potatoes and peeling then pureeing them so I have plenty on hand, both freeze really well in ice cube trays so you can defrost them in seconds. If you are making it especially for this recipe, I recommend making plenty more so it takes you far less time to make this or other applesauce/sweet potato puree recipe next time! :)