These doughnuts were a quick and easy treat to bake and decorate.  I only needed six extra ingredients besides the mixes. These included peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips, eggs, heavy whipping cream, and butter.  Each doughnut mix contained frosting and the cherry almond mix also included the sliced almonds.  Of course I can’t just make something according to the directions and leave it at that.  I always have to “Jazz” things up a little.

So my personal touches were:  I toasted the almonds, and made three extra flavors of icing.  I ended up with five total flavors of icing.  Cherry and chocolate came with the mixes and I added peanut butter,  white chocolate, and dark chocolate using peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips, and dark chocolate chips. I did not really need the dark chocolate, but it made its way on to a few of the doughnuts.

For the doughnut batter and baking instructions I followed the directions on the packages.  For the two icing flavors that came with the mixes I followed the package directions as well.  While my doughnuts were baking and then cooling I toasted my almonds and prepared my icing.

For the peanut butter icing: I just melted about 1 c. of them in the microwave for 30 seconds and stirred them until they were smooth.

For the white chocolate icing: I added ~2-4 T of heavy whipping cream to ~ 1c. of the white chocolate chips and micro waved them in 30 second increments (stirring between each heating) until my desired consistency was achieved.

For the dark chocolate icing: I added ~2-4 T of heavy whipping cream to ~ 1c. of the dark chocolate chips and micro waved them in 30 second increments (stirring between each heating) until my desired consistency was achieved.

After the nuking and stirring of all of my chips I transferred each flavor of icing into its own individual “sandwich size” Ziploc bag.  When my doughnuts were cool enough to decorate I snipped one bottom corner off of each icing bag and went to town beautifying the spongy rings of goodness.  Ziploc bags for the icing and paper towels nestled under my wire cooling rack = very little clean-up.  Yay for me!

My family and I were a little undecided about the “baked doughnut texture” upon our first few bites.  But we were also a little full from dinner at the time.  The remaining doughnuts sat on the counter overnight on top of and beneath the shelter of red plastic plates.  The next morning we got up with a 10.5 mile run in store.  Being on the brink of a 10.5 mile run is a little like being pregnant.  I am not so concerned with my calorie intake pre 10.5 mile run, and I wasn’t during either of my  pregnancies.  Needing fuel for the run we decided to give the doughnuts another shot.  Um, yum is all I have to say about that!  I guess that they just needed to stew in their own juices overnight or maybe I was just hungry.  But the stars aligned and they were amazing.  I wolfed down three before I decided that was probably enough.  I mean I was running 10.5 miles, not 100.5.  The calories of three would probably be plenty!  And it turned out to be the perfect fuel!  We had a great run!  A perfect beginning to an ideal day!