Sugar-Free Baked Donuts Recipe (Low-Carb)

A warm donut with a glossy glaze is one of those foods people assume they have to give up entirely once they start watching blood sugar or counting calories. You do not. By swapping wheat flour for almond flour and table sugar for a zero-glycemic sweetener, you can bake a soft, cake-style donut that lands around 6 g net carbs each instead of the 30-plus grams in a typical bakery version. These are baked in a donut pan, not fried, which keeps the fat and calorie load reasonable and the macros easy to predict. Below is a recipe that actually holds together, plus the per-serving numbers you need and how to log it all in seconds.

Which Sweeteners to Use Here

For both the batter and the glaze, the goal is a sweetener that tastes like sugar but does not raise glucose. Three fit this recipe well:

• Erythritol is the workhorse. It measures close to sugar, browns lightly, and is excreted largely unchanged, so it counts as zero net carbs. A powdered (confectioners-style) erythritol blend is essential for a smooth glaze, since granular erythritol stays gritty.
• Monk fruit is usually sold blended with erythritol and adds clean sweetness without the faint cooling aftertaste some people notice from erythritol alone.
• Allulose browns and dissolves beautifully and gives the most sugar-like glaze, though it is pricier and can make baked goods a touch softer.

A warning that matters for blood sugar: jaggery, honey, maple syrup, coconut sugar, and dates are all still sugar and will spike glucose just like table sugar. They have no place in a sugar-free recipe. And avoid maltitol, a sugar alcohol common in cheap commercial “sugar-free” donuts. Maltitol has a real, measurable glucose effect and should only be counted as roughly half-carb, not zero. We dig into that gray zone in our guide to sugar alcohols and carb counting.

The Recipe: Baked Almond-Flour Donuts

Makes 8 standard donuts. You will need a 6-cavity donut pan (bake in two batches) or a 12-cavity pan.

Batter ingredients

• 2 cups (224 g) blanched almond flour, finely ground
• 1/2 cup (96 g) granular erythritol or monk fruit blend
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp fine salt
• 3 large eggs, room temperature
• 1/4 cup (56 g) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
• 1/4 cup (60 ml) unsweetened almond milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)

Glaze ingredients

• 1/2 cup (60 g) powdered erythritol blend
• 1 to 2 tbsp unsweetened almond milk
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Heat the oven to 350F (175C) and grease the donut pan well, even if it is nonstick.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the almond flour, erythritol, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon until evenly combined and free of lumps.
3. In a second bowl, whisk the eggs, melted butter, almond milk, and vanilla until smooth.
4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until you have a thick, scoopable batter. Do not overmix.
5. Spoon or pipe the batter into the donut cavities, filling each about three-quarters full. A zip-top bag with a corner snipped off works as a piping bag.
6. Bake for 16 to 18 minutes, until the tops are golden and spring back when pressed lightly. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely. Glazing a warm donut will melt the glaze right off.
7. For the glaze, whisk the powdered erythritol with 1 tbsp almond milk and the vanilla, adding more milk a few drops at a time until it ribbons off the whisk. Dip the top of each cooled donut and let set for a few minutes.

Per serving (1 glazed donut, recipe yields 8): ~205 kcal, 6 g net carbs, 7 g protein, 17 g fat. The total carbohydrate per donut is about 9 g, of which 3 g is fiber from the almond flour; the erythritol contributes no countable net carbs. If you skip the glaze, drop to about 190 kcal and 5 g net carbs per donut.

A Cinnamon-Sugar Variation

For a churro-style finish instead of glaze, brush the cooled donuts lightly with melted butter and toss in a mix of 1/4 cup granular erythritol and 1 tsp cinnamon. This swaps the glaze macros for roughly 200 kcal, 6 g net carbs, 7 g protein, 17 g fat per donut, since the erythritol coating stays inert.

Almond flour is naturally high in fat, which is why these donuts are satisfying in a way that low-fat baked goods rarely are. If the protein number matters to your day, see our piece on protein targets for weight loss for context on where one donut fits.

How to Log This in CalEye

You have two good options, depending on whether this is a one-off treat or something you will bake again.

For a single occasion, just take a photo. CalEye’s photo logging estimates calories and macros directly from a snap of your plate, which is plenty accurate for a one-time dessert. Snap the donut on a plain plate for the cleanest read.

For a recipe you will repeat, build it once and reuse it. Go to My Recipes, enter each ingredient by weight (the gram amounts above are there for exactly this reason), set the yield to 8 servings, and save it. From then on, logging is a single tap for one donut at the per-serving macros. Weighing ingredients once removes the guesswork that creeps in with eyeball estimates, and it makes scaling trivial if you want to read more in our note on recipe and calorie scaling.

CalEye also handles the sugar-alcohol math for you. Erythritol is subtracted fully from net carbs, while xylitol and maltitol are counted at roughly half their carb value, matching their real glucose impact. That means the net-carb figure you see reflects what actually reaches your bloodstream, not the inflated total-carb number on a package. If the distinction is new to you, start with net carbs versus total carbs.

A practical note for blood-sugar management: even at 6 g net carbs, individual responses vary, and the almond flour means a meaningful fat load that can blunt and delay a glucose rise. Logging consistently and checking your own meter is the only way to know how your body handles these.

References

1. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central. Washington, DC: USDA, 2024.
2. American Diabetes Association. “Facts About Sugar Substitutes and Sugar Alcohols.” Diabetes.org, Standards of Care resources, 2024.
3. Mooradian AD, Smith M, Tokuda M. “The role of artificial and natural sweeteners in reducing the consumption of table sugar: A narrative review.” Clinical Nutrition ESPEN, 2017;18:1-8.