What’s not to love about a doughnut? It’s sweet, deep-fried dough for goodness sakes. Here’re a baker’s dozen of Charlottesville’s “holiest” delights.
Row by row, left to right:
Carpe Donut’s once-roving cart selling irresistible apple cider doughnuts (and pudding-thick hot chocolate) is permanently parked behind C’ville Coffee, but will travel for events. Grab one from the brick-and-mortar store nearby in McIntire Plaza.
Doughnut Connection offers traditional rings, cake, or holes, and fills them, glazes them, or sprinkles them. Choosing’s tough, but raspberry jelly is a sure bet.
Dunkin’ Donuts has been in the biz since 1950, but they keep the menu fresh with scrumptious creations like their tangy-meets-sweet glazed sour cream doughnut.
Foods of All Nations sells a cruller that would make the Germans proud—they’re fried ’til crispy and coated with enough glaze to sweeten any coffee break.
Entenmann’s are boxed in grocery stores nationwide, but they’re still one tasty doughnut—especially the crumb-topped ones.
Krispy Kreme’s blinking “Hot Now” sign tempted townies for seven years, but now we’re limited to getting a glazed dozen at grocery stores and heating them up ourselves.
Starbucks’ ubiquitous chains couldn’t sell coffee without doughnuts and the glazed old-fashioned doughnut is dense and ideal for dunking.
Spudnuts sells out of its potato flour-based doughnuts every day and only the early birds get the yummy blueberry ones.
Whole Foods may be known for health foods, but its pastry case has plenty to drool over, including the chocolate-coated and custard-filled doughnuts.
Baker’s Palette fries and glazes ’em up fresh at the City Market to balance out the healthier stuff on offer.
Brookville Restaurant won’t sell them by the dozen, but Chef Keevil’s fried dough-
nuts filled with homemade apple butter and coated with cinnamon sugar will end your meal with a smile.
Chaps makes you decide between the delicious homemade doughnuts (made every Wednesday!) and equally delicious homemade ice cream. Perhaps both is the answer.
Carter Mountain Orchard grows apples and peaches and then makes to-die-for doughnuts with their ciders.—Megan J. Headley
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Time to make the doughnuts
For Spudnut owners Mike and Lori Fitzgerald, doughnut time comes at 1am six days a week, just as it has for the past 42 years. That’s how long the shop, which stands as the final East Coast relic of a chain that once numbered 600, has been open on Avon Street.
“You have to be insane to want to do this,” said Mike, whose own insanity comes from seeing people satisfied. “Doughnuts are like snow—they make everybody happy.” The shop’s 82-cent glazed is the best seller (though you’ll also find chocolate, cinnamon, coconut, blueberry, apple cinnamon, cherry cinnamon and a variety of cake doughnuts) and the recipe, which substitutes potato flour for a fluffier result, has never changed. Lori’s father, who ran the place before, always told Mike that it was “more art than science.” Whatever they don’t sell by their 2pm closing goes to area hospitals, giving dragging employees a pick-me-up. So how many doughnuts do they make every night? “A whole lot,” said Mike.—M.J.H.
Is that all?
The standing record for the most powdered doughnuts eaten in three minutes is held by Shamus Petherick of Australia, who ate six in 2010. Seems that opponents get stuck at four.
Tour de Doughnut
Every year in Staunton, Illinois, more than 1,000 cyclists compete in a 30-mile race in which riders’ times are reduced by five minutes for each doughnut they consume during two pitstops.