Baked Vegan Jelly Donuts (Paczki) 

Amazing baked vegan jelly donuts (paczki) are so much easier to make in the oven. Pillowly soft, filled with jam, and delicious! 

Why You’ll Love these Baked Vegan Jelly Donuts

Here in Michigan, I’ve grown up eating these donuts every spring on fat Tuesday where bakeries make them fresh and the lines are super long to get a freshly baked batch. We don’t even call it Mardi Gras, in the midwest, it’s Paczki Day! 

I have so many memories of eating these donuts but until I went vegan I never atempted to make them. Plus, I was a bit intimidated by trying to fry them. That’s why I tried to bake them and I freaking LOVE the results!

What I love about this recipe is the consistency in making the dough and baking the dough. I don’t need to worry about burnt outsides and raw insides – baking gets it right every time. 

I don’t need to tell you why to enjoy a donut. Just trust me on this one, these donuts are one to make. 

Ingredients 

For the full ingredients, complete with measurements, please see the recipe card below. 

• Bread Flour: This is so important to use in this recipe. Traditional paczki are made with a high gluten flour and bread flour is a perfect flour to use. It makes the donuts lighter, have a better texture, and taste more like a donut. I tested this close to a dozen times bread flour vs all purpose and strongly recommend that you use only bread flour. 
• Mashed Potatoes: This is my secret ingredient on how to make vegan breads and donuts super soft, super fluffy, and super delicious! I use instant mashed potatoes made with simple water. 
• Plant Based Milk: I’ve made this recipe with unflavored, unsweetened soy milk and had the best results. Other non dairy milks like coconut milk, oat milk, or almond milk should also work here. 
• Yeast: In the majority of my baking recipes, I use active dry yeast and let it proof in warmed soymilk (for this recipe). I prefer to do this so that I can always make sure that the yeast is alive and active before baking. 
• Sugar: This helps to not only make the donuts sweet, but helps to give the texture of a donut. 
• Vanilla Extract: Adding a full tablespoon of vanilla may seem extravagant but I promise you will not regret it when you take that first bite of donut. The full tablespoon transforms this into an amazing baked donut. 
• Oil: Use a neutral oil to make these like canola oil, vegetable oil, or refined coconut oil. 
• Salt: A bit of salt to help the taste and texture. 

To fill the jelly donuts, you’ll need jam or jelly! Other options for filling include apple pie filling, vegan lemon curd, vegan vanilla custard, or even chocolate ganache (although that is more of an American variation). 

Finally, you need powdered sugar to sprinkle on top after baking and filling. 

Instructions 

Start by proofing your yeast and one tablespoon of sugar in warm milk. The soy milk should have a temperature of between 110F and 120F (43-46C). Any colder and the yeast won’t activate as well and any warmer will potentially kill off the yeast. 

Let the yeast rest for about 10 minutes to give it time to come alive. 

Then, add all the remaining ingredients to the bowl of a stand mixer. The oil, mashed potatoes, vanilla, sugar, bread flour, and salt. 

Start kneading your dough and work it until a smooth dough ball forms that is slightly sticky and tacky. You don’t want to add a ton of extra flour to the dough when making this, so just keep working the dough until it comes together. 

Now, I strongly recommend that you use a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment but you can make these donuts by hand. If you are making them by hand, add a few extra minutes of knead time. 

Lightly coat a big bowl with some oil and place the dough ball in the bowl to rest for about an hour, or until it doubles in size, in a warm spot in the kitchen.

Shaping and Baking

After an hour, place the dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide the dough into 12 equal portions. They don’t have to be perfect, but my dough balls are generally between 90 and 100 grams in weight. 

Shape each into a dough ball, rolling them in your hands and then on the countertop to get a perfectly shaped little dough ball.

Place 6 donuts to a parchment paper lined baking sheet as they expand quite a bit in the oven. 

Let the dough balls rise for about 20 minutes while the oven preheats to 375F/190C. Do not cover the dough this second time, you want the donuts to dry out slightly on top. 

Before placing them in the oven, it’s time to give the donuts a final shaping. Using a rolling pin, gently roll each donut out into an oval. Don’t press too hard and don’t flatten them too much. You just are shaping the donuts so they look like paczki and not dinner rolls. 

Place 6 donuts on a parchment lined baking sheet. Gently brush the tops with more canola oil and bake in the oven for 15 to 17 minutes, or until golden brown and the internal temperature is over 195F/90C. 

Remove the donuts from the oven and immediately roll them in granulated sugar, if you like. This isn’t a totally necessary step but it does make them extra paczki like! 

Place the remaining donuts in the oven and bake. Let the donuts cool completely before filling and covering in sugar. 

Filling the Jelly Donuts 

After the donuts have rested and cooled for about an hour, you can start to fill them up. 

Use a chopstick or a knife to make a hole in the side and give it a little wiggle. You want to give the filling a little space to live in. 

Fill a piping bag with your filling of choice and add the filling to each donut. Start by under filling and then add more filling as needed so you don’t have a big mess. 

Stack them side by side with the filling side up so it doesn’t drip everywhere. 

Paczki vs Donuts

Paczki are a type of Polish Donuts eaten in Poland before the Lenten season, on Fat Thursday (not Fat Tuesday like in the United States). According to tradition, you need to eat as many paczki as possible on the last Thursday before lent or else your barn will be filled with mice in the coming summer. I don’t own a barn but one can never be too sure so I suggest eating lots of donuts. 🙂 

Paczki are a little bit different from other yeasted donut recipes in that they are a cross between a donut and a brioche bread. They have more eggs and butter in the traditional recipe. This gives you a donut that is a bit heartier, more dense, and a lot more flavorful dough.

Getting this richness while being vegan required a lot of testing and tweaking. Not that I was complaining!

How to Store 

These paczki jelly donuts are best eaten the day they are made, and are especially good when still warm from the oven! 

If you need to store any leftovers, it depends on if you have filled them or not. 

Unfilled Jelly Donuts: Unfilled jelly donuts can be coated in sugar and left on the countertop for 3 to 4 days. I prefer to store my donuts this way, filling them as I want to enjoy one. This is the best way to store these donuts. 

Filled Jelly Donuts: Filled jelly donuts should be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for 3 to 4 days, though they will begin to dry out simply because it’s a baked good in the fridge. However, because they are filled with jam or jelly, they need to be kept in the fridge to be safe. 

I hope you enjoy making and eating these vegan jelly donuts! They have become a treasured family favorite recipe in my house and my wish is they become the same in yours. Enjoy!!

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