Recipe: Easy iced doughnut biscuits

These simple-to-make treats are packed full of bright, colourful, sprinkle-y goodness that everyone will want to try

This recipe is part of The Great Pink Bake Off 2024 – a sweet initiative to support Breast Cancer Awareness, kindly supported by Dr Oetker.

Ingredients

For the biscuits

• 150g lightly salted butter
• 65g caster sugar
• 1.5 tsp of Dr. Oetker Madagascan Vanilla Extract
• 250g plain flour

For the decoration

• 200g icing sugar
• 30ml water
• A few drops of pink food colour gel
• A few drops of yellow food colour gel
• A few drops of blue food colour gel
• Sprinkles

Method:

• First up, pre-heat your oven to 190C /170C / Gas Mark 5 and line a large baking tray with baking parchment.
  
• Grab yourself a bowl and beat the butter and sugar together until everything is all soft and creamy, then stir in the Dr. Oetker Madagascan Vanilla Extract and the flour. You’ll need to roll up your sleeves for this next bit, because it’s best to dive in with your hands to bring the mixture together into a soft ball of dough. 
  
• Cover your work surface with a light dusting of flour and gently knead out your ball of dough until smooth. Using a rolling pin, roll out your dough until its 1cm thick.
  
• Top tip: if you don’t have a ruler to hand, your average pen or pencil is roughly a centimetre wide

• Now that you’ve got a nice thin sheet of dough, it’s time to grab your cutters and make your doughnut shape. Firstly, you’ll need to stamp out a round using a 7cm round cutter, then cut out a smaller inner circle using a 2cm cutter leaving you with a ring of dough that’s ready to become a doughnut biscuit. Repeat this to make 10 rings in total – you may need to re-roll the leftover dough in between so keep your ruler or pencil handy!

• Pop the rings on the baking tray you lined earlier, spaced slightly apart, and pop in the fridge to chill for 30 mins. Once chilled, bake for 15 mins until they’re a lovely, light golden colour. Give them about 5 minutes to cool off a bit, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
  
• While the biscuits are cooling, grab yourself a bowl and mix together the icing sugar and 30ml water to form a thick glace icing. Don’t worry if it’s looking a bit too thick, you can add more water a little bit at a time to thin it down. 

• Now it’s time to get colourful! Divide the icing equally between three small bowls. Add a few drops of our pink colour gels into one of the bowls and mix thoroughly, adding more drops of pink until you achieve a bright pink colour that you’re happy with. You know the drill – repeat the same process for the blue and yellow colour gels. You can use any colour gels you want for your doughnuts and you can even leave one bowl with white icing to decorate if you want an extra colour!
  
• Onto the best bit – decorating your doughnut biscuits! Grab yourself a teaspoon and spread the coloured glace icing onto each biscuit, so you’ve got some pink, some blue and some yellow doughnut biscuits. Don’t worry if it looks a little bit messy, that’s how we want it! Spread the icing to the edges and let it drip down the sides of the biscuits for a gloriously glazed effect. 

The Great Pink Bake Off 2024 is set to be even bigger and better, fronted by well-known Ambassadors Louise Lennox, renowned chef and children’s fussy eating expert and FM104 and Virgin Media’s Zeinab Elguzouli.

This year’s campaign has also evolved to include a special invitation to all schools to get involved, with a bespoke and free of charge School’s Bake-Off Kit being created for participating schools.

Find out more about the Great Pink Bake Off Campaign at breastcancerireland.com.