The first time I ate a proper brioche donut, I understood that I’d been eating the wrong donuts for about thirty years.
Worth saying upfront: these are not quick. Most want an overnight prove, and a few want two days.
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But almost all the work happens while you’re asleep, and there are a handful of shortcuts further down for anyone who wants the flavor without the schedule.
So here are 17 brioche donut recipes, from the classic glazed you’d get from a good bakery to filled, baked, and one or two that break the rules entirely.
What Is a Brioche Donut?
A brioche donut is made from enriched dough, meaning the standard flour, yeast, water, and salt are joined by eggs, butter, and sugar.
That extra fat gives you a soft, feathery interior that pulls apart in strands, richer and more custardy than a regular yeast donut, and nothing like a cake donut, which uses baking powder instead of yeast.
It’s also why brioche is the standard for filled donuts. The dough is sturdy enough to hold crème pâtissière or jam without going soggy.
The trade-off is time, since all that butter slows the yeast, so most brioche dough needs an overnight rise in the fridge to firm up and develop flavor.
Brioche Donut Recipes Worth the Overnight Rise
1. Brioche Donuts with Vanilla Cream Filling
The benchmark version: enriched dough with three eggs and half a cup of butter, proved twice, chilled overnight, fried and rolled in sugar, then piped full of vanilla pastry cream. Sixteen hours and forty minutes total, though almost all of that is the dough resting while you do other things. Rum and lemon zest in the dough are the details that lift it above a plain sweet bun.
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2. Tiramisu & White Chocolate Brioche Donuts
The filling is a crème pâtissière infused with crushed coffee beans and a whole vanilla pod, melted with white chocolate and cold brew, then folded through with mascarpone, whipped cream, and chopped dark chocolate. Everything is weighed in grams, and the author is blunt that this is not a recipe you can eyeball. Make the pastry cream first, since it needs three to five hours to set.
3. Brioche Doughnuts with Strawberry Jam and Vanilla Bean Custard
Two fillings in one donut: homemade strawberry rhubarb jam alongside a vanilla bean custard, piped in side by side. The parchment square trick is the takeaway here, letting each donut rise on its own paper so you can lower it into the oil without deflating it. Twelve hours mostly unattended, sixteen donuts, and the same dough makes classic glazed rings if you cut it differently.
If you love strawberries as much as I do, don’t miss my favorite strawberry dessert recipes.
4. Black Chocolate Vegan Brioche Donuts
Jet black dough from black cocoa powder, rolled in sugar and filled with vegan chocolate custard. Pumpkin purée does the job of the eggs here, adding moisture without anyone tasting pumpkin. Ninety minutes start to finish, which makes it the fastest brioche donut on this list, and the color makes it an obvious Halloween bake.
5. Mango Brioche Donuts
Sugar-rolled brioche filled with an eggless mango curd made from fresh mango blended, cooked down with a cornstarch slurry, and finished with butter. Twelve donuts, and the dough can cold-prove overnight so you can split the work across two days. Ataulfo mangoes are the author’s pick because they aren’t stringy.
6. Burnt Honey Brioche Donuts
Honey cooked on the stove until it darkens to amber, then folded into a custard and lightened with whipped cream into a crème légère. It’s a small batch, six donuts, and the whole thing takes two and a half hours rather than overnight. Caramelizing the honey is the entire point, turning something sweet into something closer to toffee.
7. Brioche Doughnuts with Passion Fruit Cream Filling
Sugar-rolled brioche filled with homemade passion fruit curd folded into whipped cream, so it lands tart against all that butter. From a professionally trained pastry chef, and it shows in the detail: lemon zest in the dough, a test donut before the first proper batch, and a full 12 to 14 hour cold ferment. Nineteen hours total across two or three days, twelve donuts.
8. Sugared Brioche Doughnuts
Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery recipe, adapted for a home kitchen. No filling, no glaze, just rings of brioche fried and tossed in vanilla sugar, which makes it the plainest and best test of whether your dough is any good. The mixing is unusual: 30 minutes on low speed before the butter even goes in, which is what builds the structure. Ten hours mostly unattended, eight donuts.
9. Brioche Doughnuts with Vanilla Rose Pastry Cream
Pastry cream infused with dried rose petals, smoothed out with melted white chocolate, piped into sugared brioche, and finished with candied petals. Floral rather than fruity, which makes it the most distinctive filling here, and it’s built for Valentine’s Day. Twelve donuts, 19 hours across two days.
10. Cinnamon Sugar Brioche Donuts
Classic rings tossed in cinnamon sugar, from a professional baker’s donut cookbook, and the most thoroughly explained recipe on this list. The section on proofing is the reason to send people here: properly proofed donuts float and form a white ring around the middle, under-proofed ones sink and come out dense, and over-proofed ones leave a gap between crust and crumb. A baker’s dozen, and 4.89 from 18 votes.
11. Vegan Roasted Blueberry Brioche Donuts
Blueberries roasted with maple syrup until they collapse, then blended with soaked cashews into a pastry cream and piped into vegan brioche. The dough uses a homemade “potato egg” of potato protein, xanthan gum, and nutritional yeast in place of eggs, which is a more inventive solution than most vegan bakes bother with. Overnight rise, and the roasting is what concentrates the blueberry flavor rather than leaving it watery.
12. Maple Glazed Brioche Donuts
Rings dipped in a brown butter maple glaze and topped with toasted pecans while the glaze is still wet. Browning the butter before whisking in the maple syrup and powdered sugar is what separates this from a flat sugar glaze, giving it a nutty, caramelized depth. Thirteen donuts, and the dough proves overnight, so the frying happens the next morning.
13. Chocolate Brioche Donuts With Espresso Sugar
Cocoa-enriched brioche rolled into croissant shapes rather than rounds, fried, tossed in espresso sugar, and filled with chocolate pastry cream. The shaping is what makes these stand out on a tray, and the espresso does double duty, sharpening the chocolate in both the coating and the cream. Two hours and 18 minutes, nine to eleven donuts.
14. Brioche Doughnuts with Chamomile Lemon Glaze
Rings dipped in a glaze made from powdered chamomile, lemon zest, and juice, which gives you something floral and sharp against all that butter. Chamomile powder turns up in Hispanic grocery stores, or you can crush food-grade dried flowers to a fine powder yourself. Ten doughnuts, and the author double-dips the tops, letting the first coat dry before going back in.
15. Blackberry Cream Brioche Doughnuts
The simplest filling on this list: whipped cream with three tablespoons of blackberry jam folded through. No custard, no tempering eggs, no chilling for hours. That makes it the one to try first if the pastry cream recipes have been putting you off, and swapping the jam for raspberry or peach works just as well. Two and a half hours, nine doughnuts.
16. Salted Caramel Chocolate Ganache Brioche Doughnuts
The filling is the clever part: a caramel cooked to deep amber, poured over milk chocolate and emulsified into a ganache, which comes out fudgy and silky rather than sweet and flat. It needs to set overnight in the fridge, so make it the day before. Twelve doughnuts, 5 from 4 reviews, and any leftover ganache makes salted caramel hot chocolate.
17. Carrot Cake Brioche Donuts
Freshly grated carrot, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom worked into the dough, then fried, dipped in vanilla bean glaze, and filled with cream cheese frosting. Carrot cake in donut form, and the spicing is the part that sells it. The dough needs 8 to 12 hours in the fridge, so it’s a make-the-night-before job.