How to Make Conversation Heart Doughnuts
The 'cheesiest' doughnuts you'll ever make.
It's almost Valentine's Day, so get in the mood for love by baking these adorable conversation heart doughnuts. But before we get started, you should know that these aren’t your average rings of fried dough. For ease, this recipe isn’t fried, but baked, so these little heart-shaped wonders with pink ombre frosting and cute brie puns almost classify as healthy. I was going to go with doughnut puns, but it's Valentine's Day, so I wanted to be a little cheesy. Whatever you want to call them, they're undeniably cute!
1 MIX YOUR DOUGHNUT BATTER
Start by whipping up some baked cake doughnuts, omitting the nutmeg. Get the recipe.
Lightly butter or grease your heart-shaped pan. Fill them a little less than halfway with batter.
2 BAKE AND COOL
Bake your doughnuts according to the recipe, being sure to keep an eye on them, rotating the pan if needed. If your doughnuts rise unevenly, don't worry, after they cool, you can trim them so they lie flat.
Once your doughnuts are baked, let them cool in the pan for 5 minutes before turning them onto a rack and letting them cool completely. Now you can trim them if they are uneven.
4 TINT BUTTERCREAM
Lightly tint the buttercream with a tiny bit of red food coloring, mixing well until pale pink.
Note: I used powdered food coloring here, which is ideal for when you want to add a lot of vibrancy but don't want extra liquid in your frosting. You can also use gel coloring, which I often use. The food coloring that you find in the baking aisle at the grocery store would work as well, but you probably won't get as much of an ombre gradient because you'll have to add so much of it (it's pretty liquid-y) and it'll change the texture of your frosting.
5 FROST ONE DOUGHNUT
Use an offset spatula or butter knife and ice the top of one of the doughnuts all the way to the edges.
6 TINT AGAIN
Add a bit more food coloring to the buttercream and mix well.
7 REPEAT UNTIL DONE
Ice another doughnut. Repeat until you have reached a dark shade of pink/red and all of your doughnuts are iced.
8 MAKE ICING & BE CUTE
Mix together a bit of icing sugar with water (1/3 cup icing sugar to 1-2 teaspoons of water). You want the icing to be the consistency of thick honey. Place the icing in a piping bag or a ziplock bag with a tiny bit of the corner cut off. Finally, pipe out cute puns on the top of each doughnut. Enjoy!