The Cost of Making ‘Steven Universe’ Donuts

If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have Funfetti donuts topped with cake frosting and star-shaped fruit snacks.

As Billfolders may remember from a previous update, I had planned to make Steven Universe-themed cupcakes to celebrate the new season. Cupcakes would have been super-simple: bake ’em up, frost ’em up, plonk a gold star in the center of the frosting, done.

Then I remembered I owned a donut pan.

I had gotten this donut pan for Christmas, but I had never made donuts in it, and suddenly I was all I have to make donuts. Like the Big Donut. This is the best idea ever!

The problem? I only had the ingredients for making cupcakes.

Turning cake mix into cake donut mix is pretty simple, as it turns out; I used Jennifer Meyering’s recipe, which involves reducing the amount of eggs and oil you put in the mix (to get a dryer dough), and then I squirted gobs of cooking spray into my donut pan so the donut’s outer crust would get that slightly greasy cake donut texture.

Here’s what I learned:

1. The “turn cake mix into cake donut mix” thing works.
2. Don’t do it with Funfetti cake mix, though. That just makes it obvious that you poured boxed cake mix into a donut pan. Pick a yellow or chocolate cake mix, and you might have a better chance of saying yes, these are donuts, they are not just circle-shaped cupcakes.
3. Adding the oil to the donut pan did get me the crust texture I wanted.
4. Adding the oil to the donut pan also got me super-rich donuts.
5. You do want to fill the donut pans the way Meyering recommends: scooping the dough into a large plastic bag, snipping off one corner of the bag, and squeezing the dough into the pans.
6. If you can figure out how to scoop dough into a large plastic bag without getting it everywhere, let me know.
7. You’re going to have to experiment with how much to fill your donut rings. The more batter you add, the more your donuts take on a springy cake texture instead of the more compact cake donut texture, so try to hit that sweet spot (pun intended) where the donut has a rounded top but does not actually decide to turn into cake.

I’d give myself an 8 out of 10 on donut making, which isn’t bad considering it was my first time. I’d give myself a 3 out of 10 on the frosting.

Here’s what I should have done: I should have shoved my can of Pillsbury Creamy Supreme Vanilla Frosting into the back of the cupboard, gone to the grocery store, and bought the milk, powdered sugar, and sprinkles required to make a proper donut glaze (with sprinkles).

Here’s what I did instead:

I was still committed to the Steven Universe theme, so I scooped my can frosting into four separate bowls and added food coloring to get the appropriate color for each Crystal Gem. (We can argue over whether I should have included Peridot in the comments.)

Since Garnet is a Gem Fusion, I thought I could create a swirled frosting to represent both Ruby and Sapphire, which is the kind of idea that is ridiculously complicated in both theory and practice. (Do you know what happens when you spread frosting that contains swirled food coloring onto a donut? The food coloring blends together. IT FUSES.)

Then, instead of adding sprinkles or nuts or Froot Loops or another acceptable donut topping, I stuck one gold star onto each donut.

Here’s what I learned:

1. Even though some professional-grade donuts are frosted, do not use that as an invitation to slap cake frosting on your homemade donuts. Cake frosting is not the same thing as donut frosting.
2. Seriously I should have made a glaze.
3. I also should have bought sprinkles, or enough gold stars to fully cover the donuts, or something.

These donuts are clearly not my best work. They taste fine—it’s really hard to go wrong with cake and frosting—but they’re kind of like the rough draft of the better donuts I want to make next time.

Still, as Greg Universe says: “If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hot dogs!”

If every donut were perfect, we wouldn’t have Funfetti donuts covered in thick vanilla frosting, topped with star-shaped fruit snacks. We wouldn’t have learned how much donut batter to pour into the donut pan, the difference between cake frosting and donut frosting, or that food coloring, like gem shards, wants to fuse.

We also wouldn’t have spent the entire afternoon singing this song:

Cost of making Steven Universe donuts:

Pillsbury Funfetti Premium Cake Mix: $1.89

Lucerne Extra Large Eggs: $0.35 (two eggs from a $2.09 dozen)

Signature Select Extra Virgin Olive Oil: $0.47 (1/4 cup from a $5.99 25.4 fl oz bottle)

Cooking spray: $0.20 (this is a rough estimate, the bottle cost $3.39)

Pillsbury Creamy Supreme Vanilla Frosting: $1.99

Wilton Gel Food Colors: $0.05 (another estimate, the package cost $3.39 and I only used a few drops)

Hello Kitty Fruit-Flavored Snacks: $0.29 (the box cost $2.99, and roughly one out of every 10 snacks was shaped like a yellow flower—or, when you turned the fruit snack upside down, a yellow star)

Total cost: $5.24

Cost per donut: $0.44

Previously:

The Cost of Baking Magicians-Themed Cupcakes for the Syfy Secret Premiere

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