Easter Sunday + Homemade Donut Tradition

This Easter was a bit different from years past, one where we never dressed up or had a fancy brunch or dinner with family, one without our neighborhood Easter egg hunt or church service. But surely one we will never forget.

I thought I would start with our driveway donut tradition, I shared about it on Instagram and had lots of questions about the fryer we use & how we make the donuts. It is so easy and fun, and if you guys feel even slightly pulled to start this tradition in your neighborhoods, you should absolutely do it. Typically we have everyone walk over in their pajamas which is the most fun, but since we couldn’t gather this year, we decided to make them (with all safety precautions in place) and deliver!! It was truly the best way to spend the day, we love our friends & neighbors so much and can’t wait for a redo one this is all over.

A little backstory, we bought this turkey fryer the year I was pregnant with Harper. My parents were driving down to spend the week with us when we were living in our townhouse in Atlanta and they hit a deer halfway through their road trip and totaled their car. They ended up having to rent a car and drive home, we were so devastated because we had not seen them in months and were so excited to spend the holiday weekend with them. So, late that night we made the impulse decision to fry a small turkey just for ourselves and bought the fryer! We now use it every Thanksgiving & Easter for our donut tradition and it has been well loved!!

We have tried a handful of donut recipes over the years and this has proven to be the easiest & most delicious (also efficient when you are making dozens upon dozens of donuts at a time). We use Grands Homestyle Biscuits, I buy the tubes of 8 biscuits, and then cut each donut into fourths with kitchen scissors. This is where the girls jump in to help, they sit at the table with me and after I cut them, they roll them, and we put all the donut holes into giant bowls to take outside to the fryer.

We use peanut oil in the fryer and donut holes cook for only 3-5 minutes depending on how hot the oil is (you’ll be able to tell by the color). Once they’re cooked, we drop them into another large mixing bowl and add the glaze & sugar. For the glaze, I do a simple mix of milk, powdered sugar & vanilla (next year adding almond extract at the suggestion of one of my IG followers!), I never measure (which I always regret once I am actually typing out a recipe), but I make it very runny, nothing like frosting. Drizzle a little bit over the donuts, and then coat in regular white sugar (not powdered sugar) and shake them around. Honestly, you cannot mess this up, just wing it and they’ll be delicious!!!

We serve them in brown paper bags while they’re still hot and of course, coffee or mimosas on the side!

A few more pictures of the girls from our Easter, where has the time gone? I’m convinced this is the last year that Harper will believe in the Easter Bunny. She’s already giving me total side eye because I asked them to lay in my bed with me while “dad checked things out downstairs.” It stormed all night so we had to wait until early morning to hide eggs, and naturally after waking up for 32 days in a row at nearly 9 am, they decided to wake up at 6:59 on Easter morning. And we still somehow managed to find two slimy slugs in our plastic eggs even though they only sat outside in the wet grass for half an hour. All in all, it was a perfect Easter for our family. We lounged all morning, enjoyed church from our couch in our pajamas, ate our body weight in donuts and then had Easter dinner delivered to our front porch by my parents who we miss way too much right now.

girls pajamas // bunny ear headbands // girls dresses

I hope you guys all had magical Easter weekends with your families. And if you decide to jump on board the driveway donut tradition, I hope you love it and I can’t wait to hear all about it!!