These rainbow donuts are one of the easiest rainbow foods you can make! Basic vanilla donuts with vanilla frosting get a rainbow upgrade that makes them so much more fun than regular donuts! These colorful donuts are perfect for a rainbow party, a rainbow baby shower, unicorn party, or St. Patrick’s Day!
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Fun Rainbow Doughnut Recipe
With St. Patrick’s Day right around the corner, I’m seeing rainbows pop up all over the place. I’ve known that I wanted to try my hand at rainbow foods for a while now and knew this would be the perfect time for it as I’m planning an upcoming donut party!
While my son was hanging out with grandma all day, I decided to surprise him and make an entire rainbow full of his favorite food – colorful donuts with sprinkles on top.
He’s such a picky eater and donuts are one of the few things he’ll actually eat. I’m planning to make these again on St. Patrick’s Day at the end of this leprechaun scavenger hunt because they really are the best donuts!
Pretty sure I snuck an entire rainbow of donuts for myself while my son wasn’t watching. These were even better than the St. Patrick’s Day cupcakes I made last year!
Why people love these Colorful Donuts
- Fun and festive – does it get any more festive than donuts in all colors of the rainbow? While I just made one batch, you could even double or triple this recipe to make an entire rainbow of donuts! Or mix it up and make any color donuts!
- Easy – there’s nothing to this recipe other than mixing the ingredients than baking, nothing complicated at all! And it uses ingredients you likely already have at home!
- Versatile – while I made these into rainbow donuts, you could easily mix up the colors and make this recipe work for any occasion! Do red and green for a Christmas breakfast party, pink and blue for a gender reveal – you get it!
Ingredients in Rainbow Donuts
Ingredient Notes & Substitions
- Oil – you can use any unflavored oil such as vegetable oil, canola oil, or even avocado oil (although it’s a bit more expensive). Just make sure it’s non-flavored (so no coconut oil).
- Butter – you want to use unsalted butter that’s been melted and cooled. If you only have salted butter, omit the 1/4 tsp of added salt in the recipe.
- Food coloring – I recommend using gel in these so you don’t end up with added liquid from liquid food coloring. I used Chef Master Liqua Gel colors but any bright neon colors should work. Make sure to use bright colors so that you can add less food coloring (so you don’t get that specific flavor when you have too much color).
Recommended tools
You’ll also need a mini donut pan for this recipe. I used a 3 inch donut pan like this one and that gave me about 14 donuts. You can also make bigger or smaller donuts but the number of donuts this recipe serves as well as the time they need to bake will need to be adjusted accordingly.
How to Make colorful donuts
This donut recipe is easy to turn into rainbow donuts by simply adding a bit of food coloring into the batter then piping different colors into each donut to get the rainbow look! Or if you’d prefer to have each of your donuts a different color and stack them like a rainbow, you can do that too!
1 – make the rainbow doughnut batter
Before you get started, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. If you’re using a metal donut pan, spray it with non-stick spray. If you’re using a silicone one, they should come out just fine without spraying.
Mix the melted butter, oil, and sugars together in a bowl just until mixed.
Add eggs and vanilla into your butter mixture and whisk until fully mixed.
Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg in a separate bowl and set it aside.
Add half of the flour mixture into your butter mixture and stir just until you don’t see any dry flour – don’t over mix.
Add in all of the buttermilk and stir. Then finish it off by adding the rest of the dry ingredients – again don’t over mix.
Note!
The donut batter will likely be a little lumpy and that’s okay! Those lumps will smooth out when the rainbow donut batter is baked! It’s better to have a few extra lumps than to have the batter be completely over mixed!
2 – Color the Batter for Rainbow Donuts
Split the donut dough into six bowls (for me it was about 127 grams per bowl if you want to be exact) and color one each of your rainbow colors using food coloring.
You should have colored batter in six different bowls – perfect for making homemade donuts in all the colors! Depending on what color colorful donuts you’re making, you might have less than six bowls, but I don’t recommend using more than six.
Add one color batter to a piping bag. Repeat with the five other colors so you have six piping bags full of donut batter.
Tip!
You can also just spoon the batter into the donut pans, but the piping method gives you a lot more control. If you don’t have piping bags, you can also use zipper top bags with the corner cut off.
Pipe one color of the donut batter into a donut spot in the donut pan, filling just that sectin about 3/4 of the way full with the batter. Don’t fill them completely or the batter will overflow and you’ll lose the hole in the donut.
Repeat with all of the other donut holes in the pan. Repeat with all of the other colors of batter you made so that each donut has all of the colors, doing your best to keep the amounts of each color the same.
Tip!
Tap the donut pans gently on the counter before putting in the oven to get out any air bubbles. This will help achieve that nice round look you’re going for.
3 – bake the rainbow donuts
Place the donut pan in the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the colored donut comes out cleanly.
Let the donuts cool in the pan for about five minutes then remove from the pan and allow to cool completely on a wire cooling rack.
Note!
You could totally just serve them like this without the glaze and sprinkles – but just be forewarned, they aren’t super sweet this way! That’s on purpose because they’re designed to be glazed!
4 – make the rainbow Donut icing
While the donuts are cooling, make a basic vanilla glaze by combining the powdered sugar and water until the mixture is smooth.
If the mixture gets too runny, add another tablespoon of powdered sugar and stir again. If it gets too thick, add a teaspoon of water until you get your desired texture.
5 – Glaze and Decorate the donuts with rainbow sprinkles
Dip each cooled donut in the glaze then top with rainbow sprinkles or any other ingredients you may want to add!
Serve immediately and enjoy your rainbow treats! I mean how fun would these be with any other treats at a unicorn party or boxed up as a prize for St. Patrick’s Day bingo!
How to Store Rainbow donuts
Rainbow donuts store just like any other donuts – in an airtight container at room temperature. These should be good for up to three days, but they are of course best fresh! I like to warm them up slightly in the oven but they’re also good at room temp!
How to Freeze Rainbow Donuts
If you want to freeze these donuts, freeze them before you add the glaze and decorate them. Place the cooled donuts in an airtight container or freezer safe gallon size bag and place in the freezer.
Freeze for up to three months and allow them to come back to room temperature before you dip them in glaze and add the rainbow sprinkles. Then enjoy!
Tips & tricks
Try out different toppings! These would be delicious with Fruity Pebbles, drizzled with chocolate, or really topped with anything! Anything your taste buds desire would probably be good on top! I personally really like a good maple bacon doughnut but maybe skip that one for these.
Make your icing glaze thicker than you thick it needs to be so that it doesn’t just run right off the donuts. I always err on the side of thicker is better for these.
Recipe FAQs
How do you get the bright and vibrant colors?
Use gel food coloring in bright colors. I used Chefmaster Liqua-Gel in super red, neon orange, lemon yellow, leaf green, neon blue, and neon purple. Neon and bright colors tend to give you the bright and bold colors you’re looking for in rainbow donuts.
Why are my donuts dry?
It’s likely that either too much flour was added or the batter was over mixed during the process. Try scooping flour into your measuring cup next time rather than using the measuring cup to scoop the flour – the latter option can actually give you a lot more flour than you need.
Can I make rainbow donuts without a donut pan?
Unfortunately the best way to make donuts is with a donut pan. While you could likely use this batter and idea to bake some other sort of baked good, you’ll need a donut pan to make this particular recipe!
More St. Patrick’s Day Treats
Whether you’re looking for rainbow treats or green treats, we’ve got you covered with these fun festive desserts!
- Lucky Charms Cookies – marshmallow filled and marshmallow topped cookies are perfect for enjoying this lucky day!
- St. Patrick’s Day Pudding Cups – layers of green, white, and gold all combined together for one amazing dessert!
- St. Patrick’s Day Marshmallow Pops – these fun marshmallow pops are so easy to make look like your favorite leprechaun or pot of gold!
- Mint hot chocolate bombs – hot chocolate bombs full of Andes Mints, Lucky Charms marshmallows, and more!
- St. Patrick’s Day Cupcakes – rainbow topped pot of gold cupcakes filled with gold coins inside!
- Rainbow cake balls – these are one of the most fun rainbow food items you can make (outside of these rainbow treats of course)!
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Easy Rainbow Donuts
Ingredients
For the donuts
- 2 TBS unsalted butter melted
- 2 Tbs vegetable oil
- ⅓ cup granulated sugar
- ⅓ cup light brown sugar packed
- 2 large eggs room temperature
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp nutmeg
- ¾ cup buttermilk
- gel food coloring red, blue, green, purple, orange, and yellow
- Rainbow sprinkles (optional)
Donut Glaze
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1-2 TBS water
Instructions
For the donuts
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Spray a donut pan (12-14 donuts total) with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.
- Combine oil, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and melted butter in a bowl. Whisk until well combined.2 TBS unsalted butter, 2 Tbs vegetable oil, 1/3 cup granulated sugar, 1/3 cup light brown sugar
- Add eggs and vanilla and whisk until smooth.2 large eggs, 2 tsp vanilla extract
- Mix flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, and nutmeg in a separate bowl and set aside.2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- Add 1/2 the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir just until the flour spots are gone – do not over mix.
- Add the buttermilk and stir until combined.3/4 cup buttermilk
- Add the remaining half of the flour mixture and again stir just until there are no dry spots but do not over mix.
- Spilt batter evenly among the number of bowls you want different colors. Add food coloring to the bowls and mix until you achieve the color you want.gel food coloring
- Pipe one color of the donut batter into a donut spot in the donut pan, filling just that section about 3/4 of the way full with the batter. Don’t fill them completely or the batter will overflow and you’ll lose the hole in the donut.
- Repeat with all of the other donut holes in the pan. Then repeat with all of the other colors of donut batter so you have six colors in each donut spot.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes or until a toothpick comes out cleanly.
- Allow to cool in the pan for five minutes then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
Donut Glaze
- Mix water and powdered sugar together and beat together until smooth.1 cup powdered sugar, 1-2 TBS water
- Once donuts are cooled, dip gently into the icing and sit on piece of parchment paper to dry. Top with colored sprinkles while icing is still wet.Rainbow sprinkles
- Enjoy!
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