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You won’t be able to take your eyes off these Donut Hole Eyeballs! All you need is 4 ingredients and 15 minutes to whip up this creepy-cool Halloween treat. Kids and adults both love them, so make them for your next Halloween party and watch them disappear.
👁 Turn donut holes into creepy Halloween eyeballs
About 10 years ago, I published a Halloween recipe for Donut Hole Monster Eyeballs on SugarHero. Both the doughnuts and glaze were made entirely from scratch, and the recipe produced approximately eleventy bajillion donut holes. I loved those weird misshapen eyes, but if I’m being honest, no one wants to make eleventy bajillion donut holes and then decorate each one individually. I created the recipe, and even I didn’t want to make it again! The concept was solid, but the execution needed serious work.
So this year, I revisited the idea of donut hole eyeballs, but took some major shortcuts to make the recipe fast and easy to pull together. After all, these are the quintessential Halloween party treat, so you need to be able to bust out a ton of them without blocking out a day and a half in the kitchen.
These donut hole eyeballs are made with just 4 ingredients, and use entirely store-bought components so you can spend all your time decorating them, not deep-frying anything! This is a great dessert for little ones to help with, and kids and adults both love them, so they’re perfect for any Halloween party or movie night.
Need more Halloween inspiration? Check out more of my favorite recipes like Zombie Brain Brownie Bites, Bloody Truffles, Red Velvet Hot Chocolate and Melting Chocolate Skulls!
🧾 What You’ll Need
Ingredients
Semi-homemade fans, this is the perfect recipe for you! Grab these simple ingredients from the store and you’re ready to go. (Links are affiliate links and I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.)
- Donut Holes: You need donut holes that are sturdy enough to be skewered and dipped. While I love freshly made donut holes from a donut shop, they can be too light and delicate to work well. I’ve had more success with the boxed grocery store variety, like Entenmann’s brand. The ones I used in the pictures are pumpkin spice flavor, which is why they’re pumpkin colored on the inside.
- Candy coating: We are using bright white candy coating to cover the donut holes, and red candy coating to give them creepy blood vessels (optional but awesome.)
- Candy eyeballs: I like using the large size candy eyeballs, because they look more proportionate, but any candy eyeballs you can find will work. If you can’t find the blood-stained ones I used, check out the Tips section below for some advice on making your own.
Equipment
- Long toothpicks: You can use long toothpicks (4″ or longer) or wooden skewers to dip the donut holes in candy coating.
- Piping bag:A piping bag is a must for piping the thin red blood vessels on the sides.
- Bowl and spatula: You’ll need several microwave-safe bowls to melt the candy coating, and spatulas to stir the colors.
- Styrofoam block: I save large pieces of styrofoam from packages to use as a drying base when dipping lollipops or cake pops. If you don’t have any styrofoam, try a cardboard box, egg carton, or anything else you can stick the donut hole skewers into.
📋 Instructions
Yes, it is this easy! Peep these step-by-step photo instructions, then grab the printable recipe down below.
Skewer the donut holes
- Stick long toothpicks firmly into the center of your donut holes.
- Melt the white candy coating and stir until it is completely smooth and fluid.
Dip the donuts
- Dip a donut hole in the white coating until it is completely submerged. Take it out of the bowl and let the excess drip back into the bowl.
- Stick the toothpick into a foam block to set.
Decorate your eyeballs
- Press a candy eyeball into the top while the coating is still wet.
- Pipe squiggly red lines up the side of the eyeballs to look like blood vessels.
- When everything is set, gently twist the toothpick to loosen it, and slide it out of the donut hole.
💭 Variations
If you want to take your eyeballs up a notch, try one of these variations:
- Eyeball lollipops: Instead of toothpicks, skewer the donut holes with lollipop sticks. First dip the tip of a stick in melted coating, and let it set so the stick is firmly held in place. Then dip and decorate as usual. When everything is set, you can wrap the pops individually for a fun party treat!
- Cake pops: use this same decorating idea with cake pops instead of donut holes. Just as eerie, just as delicious!
- Use them as decorations: you can enjoy these eyeballs on their own, but they also make awesome edible decorations! Put them on top of cupcakes or layer cakes to transform them from cute to creepy.
- Make giant donut eyeballs: why stop at donut holes? Make a mega eyeball instead! Take a powdered sugar donut and fill the center with a gummy or chocolate eyeball. Don’t forget the red blood vessels on the sides!
💡 Tips and FAQs
Floating Eyeball Jello Shots
Zombie Brain Brownie Bites
Don’t miss the step-by-step tutorial showing how to make Donut Hole Eyeballs – check out the web story here!
Donut Hole Eyeballs
Ingredients
- 24 donut holes
- 12 oz white candy coating melts
- 4 oz red candy coating melts
- 24 candy eyeballs
Instructions
- Stick long toothpicks firmly into the center of your donut holes.
- Melt the white candy coating in the microwave in 30-second intervals. I recommend using 50% power, if possible, so the coating melts slowly and doesn’t overheat or get clumpy. Once most of the coating is melted, stir well until it is completely smooth and fluid.
- Dip a donut hole in the white coating until it is completely submerged. Take it out of the bowl and let the excess drip back into the bowl. Gently scrape the bottom of the donut hole against the lip of the bowl to get off any extra drips.
- Stick the toothpick into a foam block to set. While the coating is still wet, press a candy eyeball into the top of the donut hole. Repeat with the remaining donut holes and let the white coating set completely.
- Melt the red coating and transfer it to a piping bag. Snip off a tiny bit of the tip, and pipe squiggly red lines up the side of the eyeballs to look like blood vessels.
- When everything is set, gently twist the toothpick to loosen it, and slide it out of the donut hole.
Video
MEASURING TIPS
Our recipes are developed using weight measurements, and we highly recommend using a kitchen scale for baking whenever possible. However, if you prefer to use cups, volume measurements are provided as well. PLEASE NOTE: the adage “8 oz = 1 cup” is NOT true when speaking about weight, so don’t be concerned if the measurements don’t fit this formula.
Click here to learn more about baking measurements and conversion.Nutrition
About Elizabeth LaBau
I’m Elizabeth, but you can call me SugarHero! I’m a former pastry chef turned blogger, cookbook author, and baking instructor, and I consider myself sugar’s #1 fan. Learn more from my About page, or connect with me on social media:
I want to go to there also. Because my personal food pyramid is actually just a doughnut mountain.
That makes perfect sense! Here I was feeling bad about my doughnut consumption, when really I was following food pyramid guidelines. Genius!
What a super fun breakfast for Halloween morning! I want doughnut holes coming out of my ears 🙂 Fun shots of the eyes in the hand too!!!
Haha, after I wrote that, I thought, “Wait, doughnuts out of the ears is BAD?” I might have to rethink my position on that one. 😉
Haha – how’d you know I was looking at the first eyeball picture saying to myself, “is that fur?! Hair?!” – lol. Love it and I would’ve totally enjoyed helping with the mountain of doughnuts!
Well, I was trying to think of the MOST appetizing thing to put food on, and fur seemed like the natural choice! 😉
So I will gladly take doughnut holes coming out of my ears! These look so delicious!! I love the festiveness of the eye balls and Jason was a wonderful hand model!!
Jason is the BEST hand model! He’s fastidious about his nails (which I constantly mock him for) but it sure comes in handy when I need a last-minute stand-in! Thanks Emily. 🙂
That doughnut mountain would defintiely make my life x13267368423 times better, yep.
I love how spooky these look. That cherry pie filling is such a genius idea!
Pretty sure doughnuts are the solutions to all of life’s problems! 🙂 Thanks Consuelo.
To be honest, I have no problem with 100 hundred doughnut holes. Give them to me!
Haha, a girl after my own heart!
These are too cute, and I love that they’re filled with jelly for a bloody eyeball effect. I’m kind of terrified of hot oil, but this really makes me want to invest in a deep fryer!
Don’t be scurred! I don’t even have a deep fryer and manage to make fried things occasionally. 🙂 The big downside is that the kitchen smells like frying afterward…but a little cross-ventilation solves that. And yes, bloody eyeballs are a Halloween must!
I wouldn’t even have noticed the fur pelt until you pointed it out… Too focused on other things. Do you ever get the feeling you’re being stared at?
P.S. That last photo is so especially lovely. I can see the flawless, yeasty doughnuty texture! Heaven.
Not noticing the fur just means that you have your priorities in order! And yes, I def know the feeling of being stared at–you should have seen the accusatory doughnut hole eyeballs glare at me from the trash when I threw some remnants away. Chills down my spine, I tell ya.
I LOL’d at this post – hilarious! And those creepy eyeball donut holes?…well, they look dang delicious to me! And if it DOES make 100 of them – I could take ’em – yep, all 100 in my tummy!
Thanks Kristi! There is a certain satisfaction in popping a bloody eyeball in your mouth, that’s for sure.*
*This is a sentence I never imagined writing until I became a food blogger…
Lol, no, I’ve never seen a donut hole monster eye. But if it involves a donut then I’m in! Awesome idea. 🙂
Thanks Tina! I think they’re a very rare Halloween species. 🙂
I love these so much! I hope you had a Pan’s Labyrinth moment and walked around with doughnut eyeball hands (I would totally do that).
Let’s go to doughnut mountain Charlie <—hope that reference was not lost XD
-Aya
http://healthy-appetite.blogspot.de/
Haha, excellent call! The photo shoot was as far as we got–now I’m kicking myself!
I can’t decide which is more awesome about these – how delicious they look pre-frosting and pre-monster squish, or how disturbing the picture of the smooshed eyeball with ooze in the middle is. . . . Oh, and the fur? It was my very first thought when I saw the pic! Love it.
Thanks Sara! It was actually really fun smashing the doughnut, and made me think that maybe I should do more smashed desserts more often. 🙂
This is such a great idea for Halloween! The kids love it!
Thanks Holley! Hope you have a Happy Halloween!
These are spooktacular! I love the combination of creepy, cute, and tastiness. You really did a great job on this one.
Hi Beth! Thanks for the rave review! You are making me blush! Happy Halloween!
What a fun and tasty treat for Halloween! Looking forward to giving these a try; my kids will love them!
Hi Sara! Thanks for leaving a comment. I hope your kids enjoy them!
We are hosting Halloween this year. These would be perfect for the party
Hi Nancy! Sounds like you will be having some tasty fun in the very near future! Hope your guests enjoy. Thanks for leaving a comment.
These are absolutely perfect for a Halloween party! I love that there are shortcuts too. I love made-from-scratch recipes, but I’m also more inclined to make them over and over again when they’re easier.
Right?!? Short cuts can really save the day when you are in a pinch. I hope you enjoy!