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While you hope you’ll never need it, a spare tire is an important tool for road trips! These donuts are inspired by the summer vacation tradition.

 

We are a road trip family. Those can include anything from a day trip within Texas, usually a few hours each way, to trips across the country. We driven to places as far away as Montana and Wisconsin. What can I say, my husband loves to drive. (He even served as a truck driver in the military when we were first married.)

Road Trip Inspired Chocolate Donuts

It’s a joke that living in Texas we measure things in terms of time rather than distance. Austin is about 3 hours away. It takes at least 6 hours from our house to get to the beach. While we sometimes are trying to get somewhere as quickly as possible, more often than not our trips find us taking the more scenic back-roads.

The twins have always been great at taking road trips. They talk, read, watch movies, play with toys, and nap. Littlest isn’t as thrilled with road trips or hours spent in the car. For him, life is more of a race. The past few times I’ve taken him to the park he’s been obsessed with timing his ‘laps’ on my phone. Sometimes he wants to know how long it takes to go around and sometimes he wants to see how many times he can run in a loop in a certain amount of minutes. Either way, I love to see him challenging himself.

The boys have a few different collections going on their room. Plastic building blocks, we have a huge tub of them. Wooden trains and train tracks, another big tub of them. Metal race cars, a big tub of those as well. My Nana was a big contributor to the race car collection. Usually the various collections are combined to create one scene on the floor in the kids bedroom. Littlest gets really distraught when it’s time to take apart his masterpieces. We’ve designated a few bookshelves as safe spaces for him to store his creations until he is finished with them.

Race cars are pretty popular where we live. If you’re not from the Dallas/Fort Worth area you might not realize that there is a fairly enormous paved car race track in this area. There are actually quite a few dirt tracks around as well. A couple of years ago my husband, Youngest Twin, and I went to the big race track for the first time. I won’t lie, it was pretty amazing.

Know what else is amazing, my brand new donut baking pan. Do you ever get excited about new kitchen gadgets? I have been thinking about getting a donut pan for probably a year. I don’t know why I kept putting it off, but I did. And after baking a few several batches of donuts I’m incredibly sad that I waited this long. Because they are amazing.

For our inaugural batch(es) of donuts I thought I’d do something special for my car loving family and make them some Spare Tire Chocolate Cake Donuts. The donut part is simple. Make as many chocolate cake donuts as you desire, let them cool slightly, and glaze them with chocolate glaze. Now, you could stop here. But to really make them look like wheels I added silver hubcaps.

For our hubcaps we used the center of some mini disposable pie pans. But you could also cut out some silver foil. Place the silver hubcaps in the center of your spare tire donuts and you’ve got an amazing race car themed breakfast! We ate our race car donuts as part of a breakfast for dinner meal with scrambled eggs and fresh fruit.

 

What is your favorite race day recipe? Let me know!

Spare Tire Chocolate Cake Donuts

Chocolate Donuts

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ⅛ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup buttermilk (I use 1/2 tablespoon vinegar with 1/2 cup milk)
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
• In a large bowl combine: flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
• In a separate bowl combine: buttermilk, sugar, egg, butter, and vanilla.
• Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Stir until just combined.
• Spoon the batter into your donut pan. Mine said to fill each donut cavity 2/3 full.
• Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the donut comes out clean.
• Remove donuts from oven and allow to cool in pan for 5 minutes. Remove donuts from pan and transfer to a wire rack to continue cooling.

Chocolate Glaze

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• ½ teaspoon vanilla
• 3-4 tablespoons milk or as needed

Directions

• Using a mixer (handheld or upright) combine powdered sugar and cocoa powder.
• Add vanilla.
• Add milk one tablespoon at a time until desired consistency is reached.
• Dip the tops of the cooled donuts into the glaze. Place the donuts back not he wire rack to allow the glaze to harden.

Chocolate Cake Donuts

Print

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ⅛ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup buttermilk (I use 1/2 tablespoon vinegar with 1/2 cup milk)
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

Chocolate Donuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a large bowl combine: flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.

In a separate bowl combine: buttermilk, sugar, egg, butter, and vanilla.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Stir until just combined.

Spoon the batter into your donut pan. Mine said to fill each donut cavity 2/3 full.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the donut comes out clean.

Remove donuts from oven and allow to cool in pan for 5 minutes. Remove donuts from pan and transfer to a wire rack to continue cooling.

Chocolate Glaze

Using a mixer (handheld or upright) combine 1 cup powdered sugar and 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder.

Add ½ teaspoon vanilla.

Add milk one tablespoon at a time until desired consistency is reached.

Dip the tops of the cooled donuts into the glaze. Place the donuts back on the wire rack to allow the glaze to harden.