Baked Apple Cider Donuts - cooking recipe

Ingredients

For the Donuts
1 cup apple cider
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup applesauce
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
For the Glaze
2 cups powdered sugar
2 teaspoons apple cider
electric green gel paste food coloring, for tinting
assorted sprinkles and disco dust for decorating doughnut
chocolate licorice, to make stems
sour apple, fruit strips to make leaves

Preparation

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Lightly grease two 6-count donut pans and set aside.
In a small saucepan over high heat, bring cider to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until reduced to 1/4 cup, about 15 minutes.
In a large bowl, whisk together the vegetable oil, applesauce, sugar, eggs and vanilla. Add the reduced cider and stir to combine.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to the wet mixture and stir until just incorporated.
Transfer batter to a disposable piping bag. Pipe batter into donut pans, filling each well nearly to the rim. Bake until a toothpick inserted into a donut comes out clean, 12-14 minutes. Allow doughnuts to cool in pans for 10 minutes, then remove to a wire cooling rack and allow to cool completely.
Meanwhile, in a large bowl whisk together powdered sugar and apple cider. Tint to desired shade of green using gel paste food coloring (glaze should be the consistency of glue; thin with additional cider if necessary). Carefully dip the top of each doughnut into the glaze and decorate as desired with sprinkles, disco dust, a candy stem and candy leaves.