Tessa's Recipe Rundown
Taste: Like a classic cheesecake, but with a touch of cinnamon and in doughnut form! Mmm mmm.
Texture: The doughnut is super light, fluffy, and tender while the cream cheese filling is thick, rich, and creamy.
Ease: Easier than frying, but still requires a bit of patience since we’re working with a yeast raised doughnut.
Pros: Better than most doughnuts at the bakery counter.
Cons: Makes a bit of a mess.
Would I make this again? Oh yeah, though I might add some Nutella to the cream cheese next time!
This post may contain affiliate links. Read our disclosure policy.
Confession time. Sometimes I hate getting text messages.
Which probably seems weird coming from a millennial who has had a cell phone within arm’s reach since age 14. But back then, you could only send like 50 texts a month and you had to type everything out on a number keypad. The texts you sent had to MATTER.
Now the texts we get are nonstop and endless. I feel like I constantly have 10 (often meaningless) conversations going at any given time and it makes it difficult to focus or be in the moment.
When I’m in the zone and have forgotten to silence my phone, getting a text message feels like a huge invasion. Does anyone else feel this way? Like… I didn’t invite you to have a conversation with me while I’m in the middle of finding out if Jon Snow is alive or dead on Game of Thrones!
But of course, the sender has no idea what you’re doing. It’s all just very weird. But without that kind of technology you might not be reading this post for Cheesecake Stuffed Baked Doughnuts on your phone right now!
I’m guessing you’re on your phone because over 70% of my readers are on a mobile or tablet device. It’s a crazy world we live in. I just hope no texts have interrupted you reading this right now 😉
Sprinkle of Science
Cheesecake Stuffed Baked Doughnuts Recipe Tips
Whenever possible, I like to include extra tips, tricks, and advice to help you along in the kitchen. I know there’s nothing more frustrating than having a question or getting stuck and not being able to get instant help. So, hopefully these tips answer any questions that might come up!
The Doughnuts
Even though these are baked doughnuts, there’s no batter involved. Instead, to make these as close to traditional fried doughnuts in taste, texture, and appearance as possible, we’re using a yeast-raised dough. It’s a super rich dough with egg yolks, sugar, butter, AND cream in order to mimic the rich, soft, and fluffy goodness of fried doughnuts.
I use instant yeast in this recipe because it’s so simple and easy and doesn’t need to be proofed. If you don’t have instant yeast, feel free to use the same amount of active dry yeast. Simple add it to the warm water and let it proof for 5 minutes before proceeding with the recipe.
Enriched doughs like this one may take longer to knead and rise, FYI. This dough is pretty sticky which helps the final doughnuts maintain and fluffy and light texture. Avoid adding too much extra flour or your doughnuts may become dense and heavy.
Also, since these doughnuts don’t have holes, you don’t need to worry about using a doughnut cutter or making one from two cookie cutters. One round cookie cutter does the trick here!
The Filling
Just a few ingredients makes up the cream cheese filling in this recipe. Feel free to add additional powdered sugar for a sweeter taste, if you prefer. I also like to top these doughnuts off with raspberry jam to give them a beautiful appearance and add a fruity fresh flavor. You can swap out raspberry for your favorite jam, or omit this step altogether.
Serving & Storing
The finished doughnuts are best served the day they’re made. The dough can be made and allowed to rise slowly overnight in the fridge if you need to make this recipe ahead of time.
More Recipes You’ll Love:
- Krispy Kreme Copycat Glazed Doughnuts
- Baked Strawberry Lemon Doughnuts
- Chocolate Old-Fashioned Doughnuts
- Pumpkin Old Fashioned Doughnuts
- Classic Cake Doughnuts
Email This Recipe
Enter your email, and we’ll send it to your inbox.
Ingredients
For the doughnuts:
- 1/2 cup warm water
- 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 1/4 teaspoons (1 packet) instant yeast
- 4 large egg yolks
- 1/3 cup (65 grams) granulated sugar
- 2 1/2 (319 grams) cups all-purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 4 tablespoons (57 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
For the filling:
- 8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
- 1/4 cup powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the topping:
- 3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 2 tablespoons (28 grams) unsalted butter, melted
- Raspberry jam, for drizzling
Instructions
Make the doughnut dough:
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine the water, zest, vanilla, yeast, eggs, and sugar. Gradually add in the flour then salt, mixing until absorbed. Add the butter and cream and beat on medium speed for 6 to 8 minutes, or until a smooth sticky dough forms. Remove the dough to a lightly greased bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled in size, about 1 1/2 hours depending on the warmth of your kitchen.
For the cheesecake filling:
- Meanwhile, make the filling.
- In a medium bowl using an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese, cream, sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy.
Finish the doughnuts:
- On a lightly floured work surface, roll the dough out to about 1/2-inch thickness. Using a round cookie cutter, cut out 6 rounds from the dough. Place on a large parchment-lined baking sheet spacing far apart. Cover and let rise until puffy, about 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350°F. Bake the doughnuts for about 10 minutes, or until golden brown and puffed. Let cool enough to be handled.
- In a shallow dish combine the cinnamon and sugar for the topping. Dip each warm doughnut in the melted butter, the coat in the cinnamon sugar.
- Remove the cream cheese mixture to a piping bag fitted with a long filling tip. Insert the tip into the side of a doughnut and squeeze the filling inside to fill. Repeat for the remaining doughnuts. Top each doughnut with a dollop of the cream cheese mixture then drizzle with jam.
- Doughnuts are best served the day they’re made.
This recipe sucks. Super wet “dough”. Needed to add way more flour. These turned out to be sweet biscuits. Not light, not fluffy, not donuts.
Works really well. Delicious light and fluffy doughnuts! Thank you
Hello and thank you for sharing this recipe. I got 9 good size donuts out of this recipe and they are light ,fluffy and delicious. The filling was not very sweet or tasty so I did add more vanilla and sugar. I will make these often. Yummm
Hi, my wife and I tried to make these last night, and we can’t figure with why, but the dough did not come out correctly. We noticed when we started mixing, as soon as it got dough-like, it very quickly got way too dense and was slamming around in the bowl. Then when we put it in a covered bowl to rise, we waited for hours and it didn’t rise. Finally we baked it anyway, but obviously it came out extremely dense. We’re trying to figure out exactly what went wrong because we were excited to try these!
I’m so sorry to hear you had issues when making this recipe! Normally a dense dough results from adding too much flour, do you use a digital scale to measure your ingredients? Do you know if your yeast was fresh? If you’re not sure how to check, click on this link HERE to be taken to our Active Dry Yeast vs. Instant Yeast article, we discuss how to check near the end of the article. Please keep us posted, we definitely would love for you to try this recipe again and be able to enjoy the super light and fluffy texture of these doughnuts!
No worries we just want to figure out what went wrong hahah… we used instant yeast, one packet. Bought it a few weeks ago. We didn’t measure ingredients via digital scale, we will do that next time.
We made these for another couple in our church life group. The wife is recovering from open heart surgery, but there are no restrictions on what she can eat. My husband and I kept 2 of them. They were so good and fairly easy to make! I forgot to take a picture. But I am going to make again, this time for another lady and her husband – she just had rotator cuff surgery. Again we will get to keep two. I will take pictures this time! My husband wants me to try squirting some of the raspberry preserves into the donut also. They were excellent as is though! Thank you for this amazing recipe! Everything I’ve made from your site has been delicious!
How sweet of you to make such a special treat for your friends! 🙂 Also, adding raspberry preserves would be heavenly! I’m so glad this recipe was a hit!
Making again today. Can’t wait! Pictures to follow!
These doughnuts were awful! No matter what I did they would not rise. I would not recommend this recipe!
Tammy, it definitely sounds like you had an issue with your yeast as I have not heard from any other reviewers with this problem. In my free Bread Guide, I discuss how to check yeast for freshness. These doughnuts are truly incredible, I really hope you give them another try!
How big are these Donuts?
Need eggless version please
Can I used bread flour instead of all purpose flour for this recipe?