Donuts: what's your pick?

Donuts.

Almost everyone loves them. And those that don't are somehow...suspicious. We try to avoid them, they have little to no nutritive value, and they are merly compendium of dough, grease and sugar...sometimes lots of sugar.

But god help us, we do love them so.

So what's your pick. Which ones do you automatically reach for when they open the box? Which one really ticks you off when some person grabs it before you can get to it?

[Jenise]

Okay, so I'm confused by the categories. Maple-bar topped is a yeast-raised donut as a rule but that's not necessarily a constant in the PNW, and chocolate could mean anything. So I selected lemon-curd filled and yeast-raised, while wanting to specify a good cake donut in the "cinnamon crumb" style is a favorite if done right (few are exceptional, but I can point you to a donut shop in the Alderwood area of Seattle that will melt the hardest of souls), and that I also have a serious weakness for a chocolate frosted plain cake with coconut topping. Ditto a cinnamon roll if it's twice-fried like an apple fritter. But almost no one does that, so hardly worth mentioning.

DiCamillo Bakery peanut sticks (local). Another local is Duke's, which makes donuts on-site at the local farmers market. They make two varieties, one with apple cider dusted with cinnamon sugar or plain.

[Robin Garr]

A newish little local spot here looks like an old-school donut shop but is actually run by a recently arrived Cambodian refugee couple who learned serious French pastry skillz under colonization. They make a yeast-raised donut covered with chocolate and piped full of cream cheese that's pretty hard to resist.

I like pretty much anything that's done well and I'll usually choose based on the flavor that is most appealing (especially these days when donut shops offer so many new and inventive flavor combinations).

But, in my inner heart, yeast seem so much more seductive and exciting, whereas cake donuts do tend to seem more stodgy. But like I said, at the end of the day much depends on the flavor.

I do love all donuts, but my favorites are usually of the yeast-raised varieties. Fairly often I will go with a cake donut with coffee though.

For my wife no contest: maple bar. It's the one she cannot resist.

Robin: I like the one you described. The cream cheese filling sounds way better than jelly or sugar blob stuff.

I probably shouldn't be as fond of donuts as I am. When I was an undergrad I spent one summer working the midnight shift at plant which supplied primarily donut shops. Sounds okay, right?

Only my job was helping to load railroad boxcars with 100 pound bags of donut flour and 50 pound plastic tubs of icing. Entire boxcars. And the bags had to be cross-stacked a certain way (for stability so they wouldn't shift). All night long, pallet after pallet, stacking bags, going up over my head to about 7 feet.

You know what was the worst? Not the arms, actually. Not the back. Not the legs. The wrists.

Didn't care for donuts for a while after that summer. I recovered though.

[Jenise]

When I was a little girl, my grandmother belonged to the Santa Fe Rail Club, which means every month or three a bunch of train buffs got on a train at Los Angeles' downtown Union Station on Alameda and went somewhere for the day or a weekend. Sometimes, my brother Chris and I got to go.

One day trip involved the Ventura County Fair and a stop in Moore Park just outside Simi Valley. Now a populated bedroom community of the northwestern-most end of the San Fernando Valley, back then it was such a tiny, remote little Western style town that because the train was coming, they shut down the streets and tied orange and green balloons to everything in celebration. Between each the rail cars, were luggage would normally get stashed, were big gray boxes from a real donut shop that held approximately 2 dozen donuts each. You could just help yourself.

I loved donuts. And I had never seen free donuts before.

My grandmother saw the dangers right away and sternly made us promise not to eat more than one each because it would "spoil" our lunch. Well lunch schmunch, who cared about lunch? NOT eat all the free donuts I wanted for fear of not having enough appetite for a lousy tuna sandwich or bowl of chicken soup later? Not minding Grandma was unthinkable, but passing up the donuts was even more so. At some point Grammy actually asked us to confirm that we hadn't had more donuts. I nodded yes.

Then we got to Moore Park, and this big black conductor was helping us off the train. First Chris, then Grammy, and then he reached up for me but first he put his hands on his hips and said, "Why little Missy! I do declare dis is the first time I seen you today you don't got no donut in yo' mouth!"

BUSTED.

Great story, Jenise.

40 + years ago, I worked the midnight shift in the Receiving Dept. of a sandpaper factory. Shortly after the Fischer-Spassky match a friend and I decided to open a business that would be a coffee shop during the day and a chess parlor at night, part time for both of us. Before I left the factory, every morning at the same time, I would call DiCamillo's from the office to order donuts and bread (to make toast) for the coffee shop. The lady at the bakery knew who was calling, so all I would have to say was "five and two", indication how many dozen donuts and loaves of bread. Apparently some of the people in the office, who could only hear my side of the conversation, thought I was calling my bookie.

I chose my three, but hardly ever eat donunts these days because the standards have slipped so far (Dunkin and Tim, I'm looking at you). And I refuse to give in to the $4+ artisanal donut trend. Back in my late teens/early 20s a friend's family ran an old school Italian-American bakery with great donuts cooked in lard. Our local bars closed at 3 am and we had to drop this guy off so he could get the deep fryers going for the AM donuts (and so we could scrounge a few).

No question for me; the chocolate old-fashioned is my donut of choice. I just love those things. Second place goes to Boston creme, but I almost never eat those. I also put in a vote for a local favorite. Marie's donuts is located right around the corner from us. They're old school donuts, not at all of the Voodoo ilk. Despite the name, the place is run by Vietnamese folks who somehow make regular old donuts that taste better than anyone else's. They're also known for opening at midnight; the 2 AM run to Marie's is a local late-night tradition.

Some of my co-workers are hooked on Safeway donuts, I think because they put about an inch of gooey chocolate frosting on the bars. Definitely not my style.

I do like the more esoteric ones, as well. There was a Voodoo type of place here for a while called Doughbots that did Meyer lemon, bacon and maple, and other such interesting flavors. They were delicious, albeit a lot more pricey than Marie's, but they closed up shop a while back after the owners decided that getting up at 3 AM every day to make donuts was just too much damn work. Can't say I blame them.

I prefer chocolate glazed (meaning, chocolate dough with sugary glaze on it, not plain dough with chocolate glaze on it). That's pretty much the only one I order, though I'll nibble others if an assorted box is just left open on the table....

[Jenise]

Some of my co-workers are hooked on Safeway donuts, I think because they put about an inch of gooey chocolate frosting on the bars. Definitely not my style.

No supermarket yeast-type donut has ever got the dough right, and that includes the Safeway closest to us. The donuts do raise but the crumb is too fine and there's often a fake vanilla or butter flavor to it; don't like that, and texturally the dough should be slightly stretchy.

[Robin Garr]

run by Vietnamese folks who somehow make regular old donuts that taste better than anyone else's.

Yep, like our Cambodian donut makers ... and, now that I think of it, a Vietnamese bakery out in the South End neighborhood where a lot of Asian immigrants live. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the French colonial heritage, and I'll bet it's A Thing just about anywhere there's a significant Southeast Asian community.

Not a big fan of doughnuts, so have to vote for the local.
They are small, round, filled with red jam, dusted with sugar and you get them from the van at the Victoria Market in Melbourne, which has been selling them for years. Piping hot and freshly cooked and you eat them as you wander round the markets.

Every Thursday morning I go into town for an event at church. On the way home I stop a Honey Dew and get a cheese, sausage, and egg croissant and a Boston Cream donut. Fantastic! True love fixes her on b-fast at home.

An 'alternative donut' that no one has mentioned as yet:

It's a South Texas/Hill Country/Waco kind of thing, derived from the influx of German and Czech immigrant groups to Texas. That's why the Hill Country, and all the way up to Waco, the area is studded with German and Slavic names and ethnic-oriented restaurants. In Waco there is a huge colony of Czechs that specialize as butchers and bakers.

One of the Bohemian rhapsodies of food in that area is the famous kolache. It's a greasy, heavy, soft and doughy bread wrapped around either a sweet or savory or meat filling. The most common is the pastry/donut style, with usually jam or jelly inside. But there's also the meat---often either sausage or venison---in something resembling the old "pig in blanket" hors d/ouevres..

Attend a biz meeting down in Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and you're likely to get a box of kolaches instead of donuts. They are hugely popular. Nothing light about them, mind you; they're weighty, doughy little things, sweet and greasy. And therefore addictive.

There are also, in other ethnic enclaves, the famous hammentaschen and the German-style "honey-cakes".

And of course, in a class by themselves, the famous midwestern kringle from our Scandinavian friends. They were weekend staples when I lived in Wisconsin.

There are also Polish Pączki and German Fasnacht, which are big in the Buffalo area.

[Robin Garr]

If I'm not mistaken, Kolaches first came to the US with the Bohemian diaspora to rural Nebraska (where Antonin Dvorak spent a summer and wrote, among other things, his Symphony No. 5, "New World." I believe the Czechs who ended up in the Texas Hill Country wandered down that way later, after the Germans had already given the place a middle European accent.

We had a fast-food joint here in Louisville that served kolaches for a while - Kolache Factory, which was also Nebraska-based. They were reasonably popular, as people in this German-heritage burg do love their donuts, but the shop was poorly located in an isolated strip mall not particularly close to anyone else. Every now and then I kind of miss it, though.

I grew up with Krispy Kreme in the south -- yeast raised and sugar glazed. When I was in Charlottesville we went to a diner where you could order a "grilled wif" -- a Krispy Kreme heated up on the griddle and then topped with vanilla ice cream.

After we moved to NJ I got into the cakey doughnuts at Dunkin, naturally enjoyed both, and you couldn't get Krispy up here in the north until a few years ago.

But a week or 2 ago Weight Watchers completely re-wrote their point structure. Normally females get something like 28-32 points per day, but being large and male I get 38-42. A doughnut is now TEN points. Four ounces of onion rings, 16 points. A four ounce restaurant grilled cheese sandwich is 20 points. During my final exam on Friday -- it started at noon and I forgot to bring any food and realized I was totally famished. A two ounce bag of Cheetos out of the machine was 10 points.

Obviously they are strongly penalizing sugar and fat in foods. On the other hand shrimp, tuna packed in water, various kinds of fish, have point values next to nothing. We heard that Oprah is on this new plan and is currently down 20 pounds.

So, probably no more doughnuts in my near future. They really aren't necessary. I will splurge on pizza and other foods I get a craving for. But in terms of "smart points" doughnuts just aren't worth it.

My partner is really unhappy with the latest WW rejiggering. He understands that they want to tax you more now for sugar than before. But it's annoying that things like fat-free yogurt are up a lot.