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Inspired by peanut sticks (a classic Western New York cake donut that’s coated in peanuts), this spinoff recipe includes sourdough starter discard and bakes the donuts instead of deep frying them. The result is the best thing to come out of my kitchen in a while: doughnuts that are crisp outside, fluffy and tender inside with a sweet glaze, nutty roasted peanut coating, and subtle tanginess from sourdough to balance it all out.
Alright lovelies. If you’re a 20-something or younger and you have family in Buffalo (or you grew up there but moved away), and either 1) you’ve never heard of peanut sticks, or 2) you’ve heard of them but don’t know what they are, ask your mom or grandma about them!
Peanut sticks are as Buffalo as wings and beef on weck. They’re essentially rectangular-shaped cake donuts that are deep fried, glazed, and then coated in peanuts that are so finely chopped it’s basically peanut meal. These doughnuts are not extraordinary by any means, but they pair exceptionally well with a piping hot cup of coffee.
Growing up in Buffalo I knew a couple people (of a certain age) who said peanut sticks were their favorite donut. However, for me, these were just something that was always there but I didn’t usually glance twice at. (Because when there are things like soft, ethereally fluffy yet chewy strawberry shortcake powder-coated yeasted donuts stuffed with velvety angel cream and sweet/tart strawberry jam – Paula’s, I’m looking at you – boring old peanut sticks just don’t hit the same way. Kidding, lol! Kind of.)
But having lived outside my hometown and home state for over the past decade, I recently got an odd peanut stick craving. I opened my fridge to see if I could make it happen, and my jar of sourdough starter stared back at me. YES. Let’s go have some fun in the kitchen.
Peanut Stick Donuts Ingredients
Breaking It Down
Ingredients Explained
In this section I explain the ingredients and give substitution ideas where applicable. For the full recipe (including the ingredient amounts), see the recipe card below.
Sourdough Discard Cake Doughnut Ingredients
- All-purpose flour – I’ve experimented with this recipe using bread flour and using all-purpose flour. All-purpose flour is the clear winner here, yielding fluffy, moist, tender donuts. (Bread flour resulted in slightly chewier donuts, but they were a bit dense.)
- Sugar – Granulated white sugar.
- Baking powder – Make sure your baking powder is double acting (it should say on the label; if it doesn’t, you can contact the manufacturer to ask). My go-to baking powder is Rumford because in addition to being double-acting, it’s also made with non-GMO cornstarch.
- Salt – To season the dough so our donuts aren’t bland.
- Unsalted butter – The butter should be chilled and diced here, just like if you were making pie dough. Butter adds rich flavor and helps create the perfect texture: fluffy inside and crisp outside.
- Sourdough discard – 100% hydration, chilled. The tangy flavor of sourdough is a beautiful offset to the sweet glaze and nutty roasted peanut coating.
- Sour cream – Sour cream adds rich flavor and helps result in a tender, soft, moist crumb.
- Vanilla extract – For flavor and aroma.
- Almond extract – Just a touch of almond extract is the secret ingredient that makes these doughnuts extra special. You won’t be able to pull out the flavor if you use the amount the recipe calls for, but it adds underlying depth and yields bakery quality results.
Glaze Ingredients
- Powdered sugar – The base of our glaze.
- Water – We add enough water so our glaze is runny and we can easily dip the donuts in it.
Other Ingredients
- Unsalted dry-roasted peanuts – Use your food processor to grind the nuts into a course meal (see the photos for how the peanut coating should look).
How to Make Baked Peanut Donuts with Sourdough Discard
1: Make the Donuts
- Make the dough. Add the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt to a large bowl and whisk to combine. Add the butter and toss it in the flour to coat, then cut it in until coarsely combined (we want some in larger pieces). Whisk together the sourdough, sour cream, vanilla extract, and almond extract in a small bowl. Add the wet mixture to the flour mixture, using a fork to gently combine until it forms a shaggy dough.
- When it looks like this, stop mixing with the fork. Once it forms a shaggy dough, switch to your hands.
- Knead briefly with your hands. Use your hands to knead the dough about 10 to 12 times so it forms a dough ball. (TIP 1: The dough will look a bit dry, but should come together as you knead it, and a little bit of flour left in the bottom of the bowl is fine; don’t be tempted to add water, but you can wet your hands before kneading. TIP 2: Don’t overwork the dough; not only will it over-develop the gluten and lead to tough donuts, but it will work the butter into the dough too much.)
- Chill the dough and preheat the oven. Gently flatten and shape the dough ball into a rectangle about 3.5 inches by 4 inches, wrap it in plastic wrap, and pop it into the freezer for 20 minutes (see the notes in the recipe card below). Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 425F and line a small baking tray with parchment paper. After chilling, cut the dough lengthwise into 3 slices.
- Arrange. Arrange the sliced dough spaced evenly apart on the prepared tray.
- Bake. Bake until the donuts are puffed and golden brown along the outside and on the bottoms, about 10 to 11 minutes (see the notes in the recipe card below). Cool 5 minutes, and then glaze immediately.
2: Prepare the Toppings
- Glaze. Make the glaze as soon as the donuts are out of the oven because we want to glaze them while they’re still hot so it soaks in. To do so, mix together the powdered sugar and water in a shallow bowl.
- Peanut meal. Grind the peanuts into meal and put it in a separate shallow bowl. (TIP: I use a food processor to do this; we want the peanuts very, very finely chopped into a coarse meal. Don’t over-process or you’ll end up with peanut butter!)
3: Coat the Donuts
After the donuts have been out of the oven for 5 minutes, dip them in glaze to coat, let the excess glaze run off, and then immediately coat them in peanut meal. (IMPORTANT: After 5 minutes they should be cool enough to touch, but your safety is of paramount importance so be careful and if they’re too hot for you to handle, use tongs to do this.) Let the coating set and enjoy!
Storage
Like most donuts, these are the best eaten on same day they’re made. However, you can store these in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days. After the first day I like to pop them into a 350F oven briefly (about 5 minutes) to revive them.
My Best Tips For Homemade Peanut Stick Donuts
- We dip the donuts in glaze while they’re still hot so they absorb the glaze (just like in my Middle Eastern basbousa cake recipe). This is a bakery trick that helps yield bakery quality results at home!
- After mixing up the dough, we chill it for 20 minutes in the freezer. It’s a little odd to chill it in the freezer, so I wanted to explain the method to my madness. After much experimentation, a quick freezer chill results in the most tender, fluffy donuts. For the baking nerds like me, here’s the reason why: we need the butter ice-cold so it creates steam pockets as it bakes, similar to pie crust and scones. But we want to chill it quickly for two reasons: 1) so that we bake these donuts as soon as possible once the baking powder is activated (i.e., as soon as possible after mixing up the dough), and 2) to prevent the dough from over-fermenting and the sourdough’s tangy flavor from becoming too overpowering.
- To get these as crispy on the outside as we can with baking (to simulate a fried donut), we bake these at a higher temperature and let them cook until they’re just a touch darker than normal along the outside and on the bottoms. For my oven, about 10 1/2 minutes at 425F is perfect. Even though they’re a little darker, they don’t taste burned; trust the process. This just helps them crisp on the outside so they’re closer in texture to deep-fried donuts.
Frequently Asked Questions
I haven’t tried it! My gut instinct tells me that the dough might be a touch too soft for deep frying without making a tweak or two. If you want to experiment, you could try reducing the wet ingredients a bit or adding a little more flour.
No. I know there are sourdough donut recipes out there that have a long fermentation period, but friends, not this recipe. I developed this as a (relatively) fast recipe for fluffy donuts that have just the right amount of sourdough tanginess.
During recipe development, I found that with even just a two hour fermentation period in the fridge, these donuts come out too dense and overly sour. But they’re perfect with a brief 20 minute chill in the freezer!
More Sweet Breakfast Pastries
- Cinnamon Roll Sourdough Discard Scones
- Lower Calorie Higher Protein Cinnamon Rolls (Easy Recipe!)
- Pain Suisse au Chocolat
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Sourdough Discard Peanut Sticks Recipe (Buffalo Inspired Peanut Donuts)
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Ingredients
Donuts:
- 70 grams all-purpose flour (a slightly rounded 1/2 cup)
- 3 tablespoons granulated white sugar
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter (chilled and diced)
- 2 tablespoons sourdough discard (chilled)
- 2 tablespoons sour cream (chilled)
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1/8 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
Glaze:
- 75 grams powdered sugar (about 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons)
- 1 tablespoon water (plus 3/4 teaspoon; about 19 mL total)
Other:
- 75 grams unsalted dry-roasted peanuts (about 1/2 cup; ground into meal)
Instructions
For the Donuts:
- Make the dough. Add the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt to a large bowl and whisk to combine. Add the butter and toss it in the flour to coat, then cut it in until coarsely combined (we want some in larger pieces). Whisk together the sourdough, sour cream, vanilla extract, and almond extract in a small bowl. Add the wet mixture to the flour mixture, using a fork to gently combine until it forms a shaggy dough. Once it forms a shaggy dough, use your hands to knead it about 10 to 12 times so it forms a dough ball. (TIP 1: The dough will look a bit dry, but should come together as you knead it, and a little bit of flour left in the bottom of the bowl is fine; don't be tempted to add water, but you can wet your hands before kneading. TIP 2: Don't overwork the dough; not only will it over-develop the gluten and lead to tough donuts, but it will work the butter into the dough too much.)
- Chill. Gently flatten and shape the dough ball into a rectangle about 3.5 inches by 4 inches, wrap it in plastic wrap, and pop it into the freezer for 20 minutes (see Notes). Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 425F and line a small baking tray with parchment paper.
- Shape. Cut the dough lengthwise into 3 slices and arrange them on the prepared tray spaced evenly apart.
- Bake. Bake until the donuts are puffed and golden brown along the outside and on the bottoms, about 10 to 11 minutes (see Notes). Cool 5 minutes, and then glaze immediately.
Prepare the Toppings:
- Glaze. Make the glaze as soon as the donuts are out of the oven because we want to glaze them while they're still hot so it soaks in. To do so, mix together the powdered sugar and water in a shallow bowl.
- Peanut meal. Grind the peanuts into meal and put it in a separate shallow bowl. (TIP: I use a food processor to do this; we want the peanuts very, very finely chopped into a coarse meal. Don't over-process or you'll end up with peanut butter!)
Coat the Donuts:
- After the donuts have been out of the oven for 5 minutes, dip them in glaze to coat, let the excess glaze run off, and then immediately coat them in peanut meal. (IMPORTANT: After 5 minutes they should be cool enough to touch, but your safety is of paramount importance so be careful and if they're too hot for you to handle, use tongs to do this.) Let the coating set and enjoy!
Notes
- Chill Time: It’s not a typo, we chill this dough in the freezer for 20 minutes. For optimal flavor and texture, don’t skip this step, and don’t go longer than that.
- Bake Time: To get them crispy on the outside and simulate a fried donut, we bake these at a higher temperature and let them cook until they’re just a touch darker than normal along the outside and on the bottoms. For my oven, about 10 1/2 minutes at 425F is perfect. Even though they’re a little darker, they don’t taste burned; this just helps them crisp on the outside so they’re closer in texture to deep-fried donuts.
- Storage: Like most donuts, these are the best eaten on same day they’re made. However, you can store these in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days. After the first day I like to pop them into a 350F oven briefly (about 5 minutes) to revive them.
Nutrition
Nutritional information is automatically calculated and should be used as an approximate.
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I’m the writer, recipe developer, photographer, and food stylist behind this blog. I love finding the human connection through something we all do every day: eat! Food is a common ground that we can all relate to, and our tables tell a story. It’s my goal to inspire you to get in the kitchen, try something new, and find a favorite you didn’t know you had.
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