Homemade Dunkin Brownie Batter Donut Recipe

Dunkin's Brownie Batter Donut is a heart-shaped yeast doughnut with no hole, filled with a brownie-batter-flavoured buttercream and topped with chocolate icing and sprinkles. To make twelve at home: a soft yeast dough of three cups of flour, risen twice and fried at 350°F for a minute a side, then filled with a cocoa buttercream and dipped. Allow three and a half hours, most of it rising.

What Dunkin' sells as the Brownie Batter Donut

Dunkin' describes it as a heart-shaped doughnut filled with a brownie-batter-flavoured butter crème and topped with chocolate icing and red, pink and white sprinkles. It is a limited-time Valentine's Day item; the 2026 menu listed it again with the same filling, icing and sprinkles.

So the copy has three parts: a filled yeast shell, a buttercream that tastes of brownie batter, and a chocolate icing. This is a reconstruction from Dunkin's description, not its recipe, and MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Dunkin'.

Recipe

Dunkin' Brownie Batter Donut

A reconstruction of Dunkin's Brownie Batter Donut — a yeast-raised, heart-shaped doughnut filled with brownie-batter buttercream and finished with chocolate icing and sprinkles. Makes 12.

5.0 (2)Print

Prep

40 min

Cook

15 min

Total

3 hr 30 min

Serves

12

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

• For the doughnuts:
• 3 cups (360 g) all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup (50 g) granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (240 ml) whole milk, warm
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 6 cups vegetable oil, for deep-frying
• For the brownie batter filling:
• 1/2 cup (113 g) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• For the chocolate icing:
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 3 tablespoons whole milk
• 2 tablespoons red, pink and white sprinkles

Instructions

1. Mix the flour, sugar, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Add the warm milk, egg, melted butter and vanilla and stir until a soft dough forms, then knead for 6 to 8 minutes by hand, or 5 minutes with a dough hook, until smooth and elastic.
2. Cover the bowl and leave the dough somewhere warm for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until doubled.
3. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to 1/2 inch thick. Cut out hearts with a 3-inch cutter, re-rolling the scraps once, and set them on a floured tray. Cover loosely and leave for 30 to 45 minutes, until puffy.
4. Heat the oil in a deep, heavy pot to 350°F. Fry the doughnuts three at a time for about 1 minute a side, until golden brown, and drain them on a rack over paper towels. Let the oil come back to 350°F between batches. Cool completely.
5. For the filling, beat the butter until creamy, then beat in the powdered sugar, cocoa, brown sugar, cream, vanilla and salt until smooth and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
6. Poke a hole into the side of each doughnut with a skewer and wiggle it to make a pocket. Pipe in about 2 tablespoons of filling with a piping bag and a plain tip.
7. Whisk the icing ingredients until smooth and thick but pourable. Dip the top of each doughnut, let the excess drip off, and add the sprinkles while the icing is wet.

How many calories are in a Brownie Batter Donut

FastFoodNutrition.org lists Dunkin's Brownie Batter Donut at:

Per doughnut	Amount
Calories	330
Fat	14 g
Carbohydrate	48 g
Sugar	25 g
Protein	5 g

The recipe card on this page gives no calorie figure for the home-made version. A fried doughnut keeps some of the oil it was cooked in, and how much cannot be worked out from the ingredient list, so any number would be a guess.

A filled doughnut needs a yeast dough

A ring cannot be filled. Dunkin's is a shell: a yeast-raised doughnut without a hole, which puffs up in the oil and leaves an open crumb for the filling. The dough here follows King Arthur Baking's yeast-raised doughnuts — three cups of flour to one cup of milk and one egg — which King Arthur fries at 350°F for no more than a minute a side.

• Oil temperature: hold it at 350°F with a thermometer. Hotter, and the outside browns before the middle is cooked; cooler, and the dough soaks up oil.
• The second rise is what makes the shell hollow enough to fill. The cut hearts should look puffy before they go in.
• No heart cutter: a 3-inch round cutter or a glass gives the same doughnut in a different shape.

For a doughnut that is baked in a pan instead of fried, the Dunkin' whoopie pie donut is the one on this site.

A brownie batter filling without flour or egg

Real brownie batter is not safe to eat raw. The FDA's advice is plain: "Never eat or taste raw flour, dough, or batter." The filling here takes the flavours of the batter — cocoa, butter, brown sugar and vanilla — and leaves out the flour and the egg, so it is a buttercream that can be eaten as it is.

Brown sugar is in a brownie batter and not in a plain chocolate buttercream, which is why it is here. The filling can be made a day ahead and kept in the refrigerator; let it soften before piping.

Keeping them

Fried doughnuts are at their best the day they are made. Filled ones keep until the next day in a covered container at cool room temperature. Unfilled shells freeze for a month; thaw, then fill and ice.

With them, the Dunkin' brown sugar shaken espresso is the coffee on this site, and the Dunkin' mochi donut is the other fried doughnut.