yeah, you can’t fry a really rich dough with no gluten. that will fall apart. it doesn’t have to be yeasted to fry but would have to be a stronger batter with more flour and less fat.

When I have done baked cake donuts, I use a donut pan. It’s a small pan with 6 donut slots.

Post the recipe you used.

Yeah, I think even "cake donuts" (no yeast) need an actual cake donut recipe, not just blobs of cake batter dropped in hot oil. I don't know exactly what was wrong with your attempt since you didn't post the full recipe, but you can search for chocolate cake donut recipes online. Try one of them, or at least compare it to your attempt to see where they differ. My guess is the recipes for cake donuts are probably denser with more egg per the amount of flour.

Doughnuts are made of yeast dough. Sounds like you made something random and it didn’t work, sorry

Update: the baked ones spread rather than rose, and we have chewy chocolate cookies. They are edible, but nothing remotely like a donut.

I tried to freestyle chocolate cake donuts this morning and I’m puzzled by what happened. Can anyone tell me why? Google isn’t helping.

I made a standard chocolate cake batter based on my favorite chocolate cake. It uses both melted chocolate and cocoa powder. I halved the buttermilk and left out a cup of boiling water at the end so it was a rollable dough once chilled.

When I fried the donuts they literally dissolved, leaving me with fried chocolate crumbs soaked in oil.

I’m baking the remainder and hoping they are edible, but mostly just interested in the science of what happened. Anyone know?

(I didn’t leave out the egg - I checked, and I even have the shell as proof, so it had a binder).