During my junior and senior years of college, I worked in a graduate-level organic chemistry lab on campus. Nearly all of the organic chemistry professors, including the one in charge of my lab, expected their graduate students to come into work at least one day each weekend.
However, my boss brought in a box of donuts almost every Saturday to make those weekend lab hours a little nicer. He stopped by one of the smaller mom-and-pop donut shops in town, located on the west side fairly close to his house, and selected a wide variety of their pastries.
Those gigantic pink cardboard boxes often contained classic donut flavors, like plain glazed, maple twists, and old-fashioneds… But that particular store also slipped in more exciting flavors too, ranging from donuts covered in cinnamon sugar crumbs or rainbow sprinkles to ones stuffed with banana cream filling or topped with Fruit Loops (the popular children’s breakfast cereal!).
The grad students definitely appreciated Boss’s kind gesture… They quickly gathered in the break room for the pastries and freshly brewed cups of coffee as soon as that iconic pink box arrived!
Although not required to come into lab on the weekends as an undergraduate, I still occasionally popped by to check on an overnight reaction or run a quick purification and identification test. Before I headed home on those afternoons, I took a little peek inside of the box, purposely waiting until all of the grad students had claimed their treats so I wouldn’t steal their weekend bribes…
But if I found lots of extra donuts inside, I occasionally took one to go!
I normally gravitated towards the plainer flavors. I always checked for a plain, unglazed old-fashioned donut first (I loved its dense cakey texture and iconic flavor!), but if those had all disappeared, I reached for a chocolate frosted donut instead. Because they were so sweet and a little greasy from being fried in oil, I almost always ate those donuts for dessert after dinner!
When I made a batch of these Healthy Vanilla Donuts with Raspberry Glaze, I was instantly transported back to those weekend lab donut days. They have that same cakey texture and iconic flavor as my favorite old-fashioned donuts, and the gorgeous naturally pink glaze on top was such a sweet and fun finishing touch!
Yet unlike the ones inside of those pink boxes, these healthy homemade donuts are baked (not fried!). They also taste more like true breakfast food — not overly sugary desserts! — so I never get a sugar crash after eating these to start my day!
And with how yummy they taste… I kind of wish every day started with these healthy homemade donuts! 
Continue reading & see the rest! ›› Healthy Vanilla Donuts with Raspberry Glaze
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