Dunkin' Cotton Candy Donut Recipe

Dunkin's Cotton Candy Donut is a yeast shell donut filled with cotton candy-flavoured buttercream and topped with strawberry icing and blue sprinkles. This copy fries ten round yeast donuts, pipes two tablespoons of a butter and powdered sugar cream flavoured with cotton candy into each, and dips the tops in a pink icing made with strawberry jam.

What Dunkin's Cotton Candy Donut is

Dunkin' announced it on 2 April 2025 as the Cotton Candy Specialty Donut, part of its spring menu and available nationwide from that day for a limited time. The release describes a yeast shell donut filled with cotton candy-flavoured buttercreme, then topped with strawberry-flavoured icing and blue sprinkles.

A shell is a donut without a hole, fried whole and filled afterwards. The copy follows the description part by part and is a reconstruction; MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Dunkin'.

Recipe

Dunkin' Cotton Candy Donut

A reconstruction of Dunkin's Cotton Candy Specialty Donut — a fried yeast shell filled with cotton candy buttercream and topped with strawberry icing and blue sprinkles. Ten donuts.

5.0 (1)Print

Prep

40 min

Cook

10 min

Total

3 hr 20 min

Serves

10

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

• For the donuts:
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup warm whole milk
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter (melted)
• 6 cups vegetable oil, for deep-frying
• For the cotton candy buttercream:
• 1/2 cup softened unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon whole milk
• 1/2 teaspoon cotton candy flavouring
• For the strawberry icing:
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons strawberry jam (sieved)
• 1 tablespoon whole milk
• 2 tablespoons blue sprinkles

Instructions

1. Mix the flour, the granulated sugar, the yeast and the salt in a large bowl. Add the warm milk, the egg and the melted butter, stir to a soft dough and 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 hours, until doubled.
3. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to 1/2 inch thick. Cut out rounds 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 donuts three at a time for about 1 minute a side, until golden brown. Drain them on a rack and let them cool completely.
5. Beat the butter until creamy, then beat in 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, 1 tablespoon of milk and the cotton candy flavouring for 2 minutes, until light.
6. Poke a hole into the side of each donut with a skewer and move it around to make a pocket. Pipe in about 2 tablespoons of buttercream.
7. Stir the remaining powdered sugar, the jam and 1 tablespoon of milk into a thick pink icing. Dip the top of each donut, let the excess drip off and scatter the sprinkles over it while the icing is wet.

Where the cotton candy taste comes from

Cotton candy is spun sugar with a flavouring and a colour. In a buttercream the flavouring does the work.

• Cotton candy flavouring is sold in small bottles with the baking extracts and candy-making supplies. Half a teaspoon flavours the whole batch; more turns it perfumed.
• Real cotton candy: dissolve 1 ounce of it in the tablespoon of milk, warmed, and beat that into the butter. It adds sugar as well as flavour, so take 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar out.
• Colour: the filling in the card stays white. A drop of blue gel colouring makes it the colour of the sprinkles.

Frying the shells

The dough is the one of the brownie batter donut on this site.

• Proof until puffy. A round that springs back slowly when pressed is ready. Underproofed donuts fry up dense and split at the side.
• 350°F, a minute a side. Cooler oil soaks in. Hotter oil browns the outside before the middle has cooked.
• Cool before filling. Buttercream melts in a warm donut and runs out of the hole.

Strawberry icing from jam

Jam gives the icing its colour and its taste at once. Press it through a sieve first, so that no pieces of fruit sit on the donut. With strawberry extract in place of jam, use 2 tablespoons of milk, 1/4 teaspoon of extract and a drop of pink colouring.

The same day

Filled yeast donuts are at their softest on the day they are fried. They keep until the next day in a closed container at room temperature; in the refrigerator the dough turns firm.

Another Dunkin' donut copied on this site is the baked whoopie pie donut. The chewy mochi donut is a different dough altogether.