Lavender Brioche Donuts with Pineapple Flowers
Apartment café: garden party - April 2025
Nov 4, 2025
Another apartment café come and gone. I always feel like I look forward to them for weeks on end and then they happen and end too quickly. As a recap the theme was garden party. We were debating whether to make it plant/floral themed, or treat it as an ~infused~ garden party. But I didn’t want to get high at 11am on a Sunday morning so we went with the more g-rated theme. We gave our guests the mood board of: rhubarb, carrots, things that grow in the ground, rose, lavender, florals, greens, and browns.
This is what everyone made:
- me - lavender brioche donuts with pineapple flowers; rhubarb danishes with matcha moss crumbs
- @lilypcrumbs - pistachio orange cakes, lemon tarts (they didn’t make the cut and one ended up on my floor)
- @iloafyoubychristine - ramp focaccia; sourdough rhubarb pbjs with coconut
- Rachel DiNunzio - rhubarb olive oil cottage cake; black sesame rock cake
- @dolcetta.baking - zucchini mini-cakes
- Erika - her viral pecan carrot cake
- @thedeeperlivingeats - rhubarb tart cups
- @zack.Zico - fig tart with balsamic drizzle
- jeremy scheck - saffron from Spain; peanut butter and kettle corn from Ithaca
Regarding my bakes — I had seen the pineapple flowers on Instagram so many times on my feed. When we decided to do garden party for the theme I absolutely knew it was the perfect time to try it out. And since for the March/eid apartment café I had made the most delicious saffron rose donuts that everyone was begging the recipe for, I thought it would make sense to do a donut 2.0 of sorts. And since I couldn’t just make another rose donut, I pivoted to lavender.
Lavender (and all florals, actually) is such a hard flavor to nail. Too much and the treat is perfume-like and nearly bitter — like the candles I frequently get in PR packages that make my throat burn. Too little and the delicate flavor will be masked by the richness of the dough. Thankfully the lavender extract I got on amazon was barely potent so it was sort of difficult for me to go overboard (the bougier the extract, the more potent it will be, generally).
For my second treat I was inspired by @brightmomentco and her blueberry danishes. I had the idea to cut rhubarb on the bias and make an abstract floral pattern. And my friend Rachel had suggested making moss crumbs by simply mixing ceremonial matcha into graham cracker crumbs. The pink + green combo next to the lilac-glazed donuts on the buffet was really quite something. I think I still have to test the danish recipe again, though. The dough was a little too lean (aka it needed more butter), so it became slightly dry in the oven. But still a good visual concept nonetheless.
Here’s my pyramid ranking of all the goodies:
- S: black sesame rock cakes, lavender donuts
- A: ramp focaccia, pistachio cakes
- B: zucchini cakes, carrot cake, rhubarb tart cups, cottage core cakes
- C: rhubarb danishes, pbjs
- D:
- F:
- N/A: I didn’t try the fig tart oops, sorry Zack
It would be interesting to compile everyone’s rankings into an average. Maybe I’ll do that for the next one. If you have any ideas for what you want to see in this apartment café recaps, make sure to leave a comment. Happy to build these posts out so you’re getting the scoop you want.
Hey! My name is Ryan Nordheimer. Welcome to my cooking and baking site. I’m a 25-year old home cook living in the East Village in New York City. Hopefully you enjoy my food through my own, tried-and-true recipes.
Ingredients (24)
Ingredients (24)
Dough
Pastry cream
Assembly
Dried pineapple flowers
Instructions
Dried pineapple flowers
Preheat oven to 200°F
Top and bottom your pineapple (1). Cut away the outside skin. Using a spoon, gently dig into the pineapple flesh and scoop out the pineapple “eyes”, just deep enough to remove the eye. Work around the whole pineapple.
Turn the pineapple on its side. Thinly slice with a sharp knife pineapple slices. Lay these slices on two parchment-lined baking sheets.
Bake the pineapple slices for 2 hours, until very dried out. (To dry out further, turn oven off at this point and leave them overnight).
Store in a sealed container.
Dough
In the bowl of a stand-mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, add all the dough ingredients (flour (4 ½ cups), egg (1), salt (2 tsp), sugar (½ cup), yeast (1 packet), milk (1 cup), water (½ cup)), except the butter.
Combine all the ingredients on low speed. Then increase to medium-low and knead for 10 minutes.
Add the butter (1 stick), piece by piece, and continue mixing for another 8 minutes.
Transfer dough to a greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let proof for 30 minutes at room temperature, then transfer to the fridge to proof overnight.
Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, whisk together the sugar (⅔ cup) and cornstarch (½ cup) to get rid of clumps.
Then whisk in the egg yolks (9), milk (3 cups), and salt (½ tsp).
Heat pot over medium-high heat whisking constantly. Once mixer starts to thicken (it’ll happen quickly), turn heat down to low and continue to whisk for 1 minute.
Bring off heat and mix in butter (4 Tbsp), extracts (vanilla (1 tsp) and lavender (1 tsp)), and dye (2–3). Dump onto a quarter-sheet tray or into a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap, transfer to fridge, and let cool completely.
Cut out 14 parchments squares large enough to fit 3” circles (no need to be precise about the squares). And space them between 2 half-sheet trays.
Press down on dough to remove air. Then scrap onto a lightly floured work surface.
Roll out to about 1/2” thickness. Then using a 3” circle cutter, punch out 12-14 circles (you can also fry the scraps, or bake them off with cinnamon sugar). Transfer 1 circle to each parchment square.
Cover with plastic wrap or a lightly damp tea towel. Transfer to your oven with the light turned on to proof for 1 - 1 1/2 hours, until when you poke them the dough springs back but leaves a slight imprint.
Meanwhile, get a pot out. Add enough neutral oil to come up about 2” up the height of the pot. Preheat over medium-high heat until oil reaches 350°FF, then lower to medium-low heat.
Drop in 3-4 donuts circles at a time and immediately pull of parchment square. Fry donuts 2 minutes on each side until deep golden, maintaining oil temperature at 350F.
Transfer donuts to a wire rack lined with paper towels.
Once donuts are cool, use a paring knife to make a little incision in the side and swipe the knife around to help create a pocket on the inside for the filling.
Whisk the pastry cream to loosen it, transfer to a piping bag fitted with a 1/4” round tip, and fill donuts. Wipe off the excess cream the oozes out, but the cream should be thick enough where it’s not running completely out the donut (if that’s the case, you can stop the flow with a raspberry, kumquat, a little piece of pineapple, etc.).
In a large bowl, add a good amount of powdered sugar (3 cups), then add hot water (2 Tbsp) a little bit at a time and mix until you have a thick glaze consistency that still flows.
Add lavender extract (½ tsp) and food dye (2–3).
Using an offset spatula, smear some glaze evenly across the tops of the donuts. Then before the icing sets completely, top each donut with a pineapple flower (12–14).
