These colorful and delicious rainbow donuts only require a few simple ingredients and minimal prep time. Perfect for St. Patrick’s Day, or really…any day!

Why are we sharing rainbow donuts?  Well, they seem to have overtaken rainbow cakes when it comes to the most requested rainbow treats for kids. So we’ve tracked down some of the cutest, colorful, delicious donuts that you can easily make for anyone particularly lucky. Pot of gold at the end of the rainbow donut is optional! But a good donut pan is not.

Pro tip: Be sure you have some kind of airtight container like this one for storage, to keep them fresh. A Ziploc bag will work but you don’t want to ruin some of the frosting masterpieces you’ll achieve with these donuts.

Or is it doughnuts?

Donuts/doughnuts…whatever you call them, happy eating.

How to Make 5 Different Quick and Easy Rainbow Donuts

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Fruity Pebble Rainbow Donuts

We love the look of these homemade rainbow donuts at The First Year thanks to one very clever ingredient: Fruity Pebbles! If you’re short on time, you can pick some up plain store-bought donuts from the grocery or fresh from a local donut shop, and let the kids do the rainbow cereal sorting for you by following her instructions. Her other secret ingredients: white chocolate and shredded coconut for the clouds. These rainbow donuts double as a cheerful breakfast — or after-school treat, or classroom party treat.

Baked Funfetti Rainbow Sprinkle Donuts

Sally’s Baking Addiction has been a favorite resource of ours for tried-and-tested recipes that come out as delicious as promised. (Her banana muffin recipe got us through the pandemic!) Here, she shares a Baked Funfetti Donut recipe that yields a cakey, delicious donut thanks to a secret ingredient: Greek yogurt. The result is so beautiful, from the funfetti on the inside, to all the colors of the rainbow (or rainbow sprinkles) right on top.

You don’t even need an electric mixer to achieve that mixture, more evidence that the best donuts can be easy. Be sure to save that 3-ingredient easy vanilla glaze recipe of hers; you’ll want to use it on everything! In fact, you might want to make more than one batch of these; they’d make great classroom treats.

Tie-Dye Glaze Rainbow Donuts

While rainbow sprinkles are always one way to rainbow-up your donuts, here’s another: rainbow frosting! We’ve been fans of these Tie Dye Rainbow Donuts from Eugenie Kitchen for so long, because her method for getting that cool glaze effect is so smart and simple. Follow the instructions on YouTube or keep it easy with plain, store-bought donuts kept at room temperature. Then coat with her easy two-ingredient glaze for a fun kitchen project with the kids.

In fact, you could try the glaze over some large store-bought vanilla or lemon cookies too if you need some treats for the classroom. While they look as beautiful as anything found in gourmet donut shops, they aren’t just made for Instagram and Pinterest; these rainbow donuts are made for EATING. And you’ll want to eat a lot of them.

Neon Rainbow Unicorn Donuts

The finished photos of these baked rainbow donuts from Fun Money Mom look a little more out of the Lisa Frank/unicorn palette than classic ROYGBIV but surprise — the donut batter itself is rainbow! If you’ve ever enjoyed the cult-favorite tie-dyed cupcakes from Baked by Melissa, she’s got a way to achieve that effect. You will need a separate bowl for each color, but that’s not exactly hard, it just requires a bit more cleanup.

Her rainbow donuts are baked in the oven using cake mix for the dry ingredients (don’t forget to use cooking spray in that donut pan first!), then just add eggs and vegetable oil. Use her instructions and neon food coloring then grab a whisk to achieve those wild frosting colors, or go more traditional with real rainbow colors. Drizzle, and you’ll get that gel effect.  Want to go a little extra? have the kids cover the tops with rainbow sprinkles — order them affordably in bulk if you tend to bake a lot of fun treats with the kids.

Vegan Vanilla Rainbow Sprinkle Donuts

If you’re vegan, or have kids with an allergy or intolerance to butter, milk, or other dairy, we wanted to share one more easy rainbow donut recipe just for you. Thanks to this recipe from Orchids and Sweet Tea, you can whip up easy rainbow sprinkle donuts that also happen to be vegan. And you just need a single bowl!

Besides the flour, cane sugar, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla extract, and apple cider vinegar, you’ll need a few ingredients like almond milk that you probably have on hand anyway if you avoid dairy. (She has a recipe should you want to make your own, but if you’re going for easy rainbow donuts, just go ahead and buy that almond milk.)

Also, she recommends Sweetapolita for guaranteed vegan rainbow sprinkles, which are totally gorgeous. If you’re shopping Amazon, consider Sweet Eva’s all-natural sprinkles, which are vegan, nut-free, gluten-free, egg-free and kosher, and get their color from all-natural sources like red beets and purple carrot juice. Tip: use lots and lots and lots of sprinkles. The more you use, the more rainbow you get!

Other recipes you’ll love:
7 creative, cute rainbow desserts from easy to OMG. Perfect for St. Patrick’s Day
13 rainbow recipes from breakfast to dessert to try this St. Patrick’s Day.
How to make an easy rainbow cake
How to make Rainbow Salsa: A St. Patrick’s Day recipe that’s as fun as it is healthy.
How to make rainbow pasta: It’s not just for unicorns!

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