Decorate Your Wedding Doughnuts

Whether you spell these delicious treats as “doughnuts” or “donuts”, you will probably agree that they are the perfect wedding DIY project.

The great thing about doughnuts is that they don’t have to be all prefect. If you have little ones in your family, maybe a clever niece or a cute nephew, you could ask them them to help out.

Wedding doughnuts are especially popular at alternative weddings but you would not be totally wrong to serve doughnuts at a classic white wedding (… just go easy on the food colouring).

Ready-made doughnuts can be purchased from practically any bakery or a food store. If you have a family recipe you want to use, you could take this wedding DIY project to a whole new level. We will be decorating ring doughnuts. You could use round doughnuts instead.

Glazing Doughnuts

To make a sugar glaze, simply whisk icing sugar with water. You will need approx. two table spoons of water for each cup of sugar. Mix all ingredients well so that there are no lumps.

To add flavour to the glaze, add a few drops of vanilla extract or cocoa. If you decide to use cocoa, you could add milk instead of water when making the glaze.

Using melted chocolate instead of sugar glaze also works well (…that’s if the chocolate does not get eaten before it makes it to the melting pot.)

To add colour, mix a drop of food colouring into the glaze. Try to find colouring with natural ingredients in your local shops or online. Some food colouring are made with ingredients such as beetroot, turmeric or spirulina. These will be much better for your guests than any type of chemical colouring.

Next, you will need to get all this delicious glaze onto the doughnuts – You could dip each doughnut into the bowl with glaze. Or, you could use a spatula to spread the glaze over the doughnut. Using a brush also works well, especially if you want only a thin layer of sugar glaze. A brush is also helpful if you want to decorate the upper part of the doughnut only.

Sprinkles and Toppings

Sprinkles and toppings should be added before the glaze sets. Not too early though, otherwise you will watch all topping pieces sink into the glaze. You might need to experiment a bit first, as each type of topping has a slightly different weight.

There is so much more that can be used to decorate a doughnut than just the standard sugar sprinkles. All types of nuts will look amazing – chopped pistachios, shredded coconut, pieces or pecans, walnuts or hazelnuts.

Rose petals, edible flowers, dried fruit and fresh fruit are a few more options.  And then there is chocolate shavings, chocolate chips and crumbled cookies.

It can be hard to choose just one glaze and one topping so we suggest the “mix and match” approach. Your guests will appreciate the variety and you can have lots of fun decorating your doughnuts.

Doughnut displays

Doughnuts can be presented on a tray or stacked up into pyramids. For the ultimate wow factor, use doughnut stackers or doughnut walls. You can see a few ideas on the images below (courtesy of Ginger Ray)

The advice here is – don’t try to be too symmetric and have fun! Just stack up doughnuts in a random pattern or place them on the wall as they come. Honestly, don’t worry about perfection in this project, each doughnut is meant to be slightly wonky to make your wedding guests smile.

If you have any ideas you would like to share with us, do leave your comments below.