Baked or cake doughnuts are made with a thick leavened batter.
Unlike yeast-raised doughnuts, cake doughnuts generally rely on chemical leaveners such as baking powder or baking soda. Their batter is thicker than a pourable cake batter, allowing it to be deposited into a doughnut shape or handled in a firmer form before cooking. The result is usually denser and more cake-like than a yeast-raised doughnut.
Cake doughnuts can be baked or fried. Fried versions cook quickly and often develop a crisp exterior, while baked versions avoid deep-frying but still depend on the same basic cake-style structure. Common toppings include glaze, confectioners’ sugar, cinnamon sugar, frosting, and chopped nuts.
The main mix-up is confusing batter with dough. Yeast-raised doughnuts are made from a kneadable dough that must ferment and rise. Cake doughnuts use a leavened batter and usually have a tighter crumb. “Glaze,” “custard,” and “syrup” are toppings or fillings, not the base mixture from which the doughnut is formed.