Hey there — I couldn’t let the holidays pass without a donut-inspired project! This year I turned classic gingerbread men into gingerbread donuts. I’d actually never made gingerbread before; it wasn’t a family staple, so I started from scratch. When Bing Smart Search challenged me to use its new visual search for a project, it felt like the perfect helper for my gingerbread experiment. Judging by how these gingerbread donut cookies look (and taste), Smart Search did its job.
Bing Smart Search is refreshingly visual. I looked up a gingerbread cookie recipe, a royal icing recipe, and ideas for decorating gingerbread cookies. I liked that the search results displayed snapshots of sites and a wide variety of inspiration images instead of the same few over and over. Smart Search even helped me find recipes and old family files I might have misplaced. It’s a handy tool for gathering ideas and references all in one place.
With my recipes chosen, I adapted classic gingerbread decorations for donut shapes. Here’s how I made them.
Supplies and recipes I used:
Gingerbread cookie recipe (use your favorite).
Circle cookie cutter and/or biscuit cutter. For the large donuts I used a biscuit cutter for the outer ring and my piping tip for the inner circle. For mini donuts I used the coupler from my piping bag and a smaller tip. Any round tool sized appropriately will work.
Royal icing recipe (I divided my batch and tinted half pink).
Piping bag fitted with a large tip.
Sprinkles or a smaller pastry tip. If you don’t have a small tip, you can use a plastic sandwich bag with the corner snipped off for piping.
Make the dough and roll it out according to your recipe. Cut large circles with a biscuit or cookie cutter, then cut a smaller circle in the center of each one to form a donut shape. Re-roll scraps and keep cutting until you’ve used all the dough. Bake the cookies and adjust baking time for size: I baked the larger donuts about 6–7 minutes and the mini donuts about 5 minutes.
Next: royal icing. I’ll admit royal icing intimidated me at first, but a clear illustrated guide and video helped me feel confident. I wanted a slightly thicker, more rustic frosting look rather than the perfectly smooth finish that classic royal icing creates, so I added an extra 1/2 cup of powdered sugar to the recipe. That gave the icing a more spreadable, less glossy finish that I preferred for these cookies.
Fill a piping bag and carefully ice each cookie. Use a knife or an offset spatula to gently spread the icing and create a frosting-like texture. Royal icing dries quickly, so I decorated in small batches to keep things tidy.
For decorations I tried two approaches. First, I made a small piping bag by cutting the tip off a sandwich bag and piped zigzag lines across the “donut” to mimic real donut drizzle. For others, I added festive sprinkles for color and texture.
Repeat the same steps at a smaller scale to make cute mini donuts. Let the icing set completely, then package them up for a cookie exchange or gift — they’re sure to impress.
Mmmm — donut cookies.
All photos by Studio DIY
Did you grow up making gingerbread cookies, or did your family have a different holiday staple? Maybe gingerbread donuts will become a new favorite in your holiday baking rotation.
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