The Icing Tip That Makes Or Breaks Copycat Dunkin' Chocolate Glazed Donuts
If you live in a city like Boston where Dunkin' stores are so thick on the ground you might even find them in subway stations, you may wonder why you'd need to try baking your own. Mashed developer Angela Latimer, who came up with this copycat Dunkin' chocolate glazed donut recipe, explains that she lives "in the middle of nowhere" with no Dunkin' nearby. So, she opts for a DIY version. Because these donuts are baked, not fried, they're really not that difficult to make as long as you have the proper ring molds. You will need to watch out when you're frosting them, though, if you want them to come out looking just like the donuts that Dunkin' sells.
Latimer makes her glaze out of powdered sugar, buttermilk, and vanilla extract. While powdered sugar glazes are typically quite simple to make, here you'll want to pay close attention to the measurements instead of trying to eyeball them. The reason is that the frosting for these donuts needs to be thin enough so that the coating is translucent rather than opaque. If your frosting's too thick, Latimer suggests adding liquid to thin it out. Conversely, you can add more sugar if it gets too runny, although you do want it to drip off the sides of the donuts to some extent. Yet another tip Latimer has to offer is to frost the donuts while they're still soft and warm since the glaze will adhere better than when they've cooled off.
You can always choose to do something different, though
The only sense in which using the wrong frosting "breaks" these donuts is: If you mess up the consistency, you won't have ones that are exact copies of Dunkin's. This might be a problem if you're trying to pass off your homemade creations as the store's original, but if you're just using Angela Latimer's recipe as a template for making Dunkin'-style chocolate donuts, you can frost them any way you like. It might be fun to try to recreate some of those over-the-top creations that hipster bakeries used to come up with back in the days when donuts were super trendy.
Pastel-frosted donuts covered with Fruity Pebbles? Shades of the 20-tweens, but sure, why not. Peppermint frosting with crushed starlight mints? Merry Christmas all year round! Pretty much any kind of candy, nuts, or other ingredients might work well with chocolate — maple-glazed chocolate donuts sprinkled with bacon bits, anyone? — and they can be chopped or crumbled then stuck to a powdered sugar frosting. Here, however, you're going to want one with a lot less liquid than in Latimer's copycat recipe so you'll have a thick-enough frosting to serve as edible glue.