Dairy Donuts with Chocolate Cream Cheese Filling

Fill your store-bought donuts up with this cream cheese mousse for the most gourmet, delicious, dairy results.

On Between Carpools, there’s lots of donuts that you can make from scratch. You can go with the favorite Yeshiva Donuts or Naomi TGIS’s Sufganiot. There’s also great hacks for making your donut dough in advance and freezing it, or for making a donut from pre-made pizza dough rounds. There’s more donut basics, like Icing, the best way to make a Cinnamon-Sugar Coating, and essential donut frying tips.

There’s also baked versions of donuts, like these Donut Machine Donuts or these Apple Cider Donuts (complete with a streusel topping). 

But when I told the ladies at BCP about this donut recipe, they said, “This—this is what people really want.”

Let someone else make the donut dough and do the frying. We just want to make those donuts look really good and take the credit!

And you can do that with this chocolate cream cheese mousse and ganache.

When I originally made this mousse, I thought it would work really well as a donut filling…so that’s what I did with it. It works just as well with white chocolate as it does with milk or dark chocolate, so take your pick and have a gorgeous, delicious, gourmet fancy donut–all without frying one thing.

With this recipe, you get to do just the fun part–making the donuts look pretty. 

When I made these, all my married siblings soon found out and came from all over town to get the extras. 

You’ll start with a box of store-bought, plain donuts. Many bakeries and bagel shops sell them like this.

First, you want to make a hole and, using a knife, create a little space in the middle so the mousse has somewhere to go.

Move the knife to all sides,

the more space, the creamier donut you’ll have.

Pipe the mousse into the hole…

…then level it off on top. 

Next, dip your donut into the ganache. 

Let them all set a bit.

To finish these off, you can drizzle with some extra ganache

(in a piping bag with just the tip snipped off)…

Then pipe some more of the cream cheese mousse in the middle. You’ll need to have a star tip inserted into the bag for this look.

Add a piece of chocolate if you like. Can’t hurt.

FAQ: If these are dairy anyway, why am I using non-dairy whipped topping instead of heavy cream? I have a simple answer. I tried them using heavy cream, but the mousse was simply too heavy. Whipped topping whips up lighter and is more stable. And there’s enough dairy flavor from the other ingredients, so that turned out to be the better option. 

Want to see more ways to hack a ready donut? See these Fancy Donuts.