Bread Machine Jelly Donuts: mini heart shaped jelly donuts, with an easy to make bread machine dough. Perfect for Valentine’s Day dessert, or anytime.

These Jelly Donuts are the perfect Valentine’s Day treat….or any other occasion treat…maybe just the perfect treat in general. If you’ve never made homemade donuts before, this is the recipe for you, because the hard part is all done in the bread machine. These bread machine donuts are really easy to make.

And trust me, no one will ever know, they’ll be too busy saying things like “you made donuts…you are amazing, the donuts are amazing, you and the donuts are amazing.”

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I’ve made donuts a few times -like these Homemade Honey Crullers, the kind of tricky part is deep frying them. But these weren’t even made in a deep fryer, I just used a little pot of oil on the stove and oil thermometer. When you taste them, you will think it was worth the trouble. Trust me.

Easy Bread Maker Donuts

So start out with your trusty old bread maker machine. Set it to the dough setting and let it do all the hard work.

Jelly Donuts

Ingredients

3/4 cup lukewarm milk
2 tablespoons warm water
1 egg, beaten
3 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoons (1 pkg.) active dry yeast
oil for frying
white sugar to roll the fried donuts in
jam for filling -I used raspberry, you can use your favourite kind

Instructions

When making dough in a bread maker, the order the ingredients are added in is important. Add ingredients layer by layer, and do not mix. For the first layer in the bread maker, add milk, water, and beaten egg. Next add the butter, sugar and salt. Finally add the flour, and the yeast as the last ingredient. Set bread maker to dough setting and start the machine.
When the dough is finished, roll out on a floured surface to about a 1/2 inch thick. Use a small heart to cut out donuts. Lay donuts on a greased cookie sheet, cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise around 30 min.
Fry donuts in oil that's 350 degrees, until golden brown, then flip over and cook over side. (If the outside is too brown and the middle isn’t cooked, your oil is too hot -you will have to watch the temp as you go, and adjust as needed, or use a deep fryer.)
Roll the hot donuts in white sugar to coat them. To fill the donuts with jelly, wait until they are cool, then use a piping bag with a #230 tip to pipe a jam of your choosing into the middle. Best eaten the same day -which frankly isn’t really a problem. ?

heart shaped mini donut dough for Valentine's Day dessert

Hearts for Valentine’s Day

I thought it would be fun to make these into mini hearts for Valentine’s day. And, it was. They were so, so cute.

Special Jelly Donut Filling Tip

I did try once before to make jelly donuts and I had a little trouble getting the jelly inside. This time I was prepared and picked up a #230 tip for my icing bag. It’s long and thin, and perfect for poking into the donut and squeezing in the jam.

If you’re going to make these I highly recommend picking this little guy up first. I’ve tried in the past with a ziplock bag, and a regular icing tip on an icing bag, but it’s too hard to get the jam pushed all the way inside the donut. This special tip worked perfectly.

These, like any donuts, are best eaten as soon as you make them.

Make the Dough Ahead

You can however, make the dough ahead of time. I saved half my dough, wrapped in plastic wrap in the fridge over night, and it still worked great.

So, if you were thinking of making these for your sweetheart for breakfast, you could make the dough the night before and just fry them in the morning. And then your sweetheart will love you even more.