How My Donut Taste Evolved: From Sugar-Explosion to Simple Perfection

🍩 The Simplicity of Donuts (and Getting Older)

There was a time when I wouldn’t even look twice at a plain donut. As a kid, I wanted the biggest, gooiest, most sugar-packed donut in the case, the custard-filled, chocolate-iced Long John. If there was jelly or filling oozing out, even better. I wanted that sugar rush that made Saturday mornings feel like a party.

A chocolate-iced donut with sprinkles? That was “plain Jane” to me. I’d only grab one of those if the case was picked over and the good stuff was gone. I wanted bang for my buck — flavor explosions, sticky fingers, frosting under my nails, and that feeling like I’d just pulled off the best trade in the school cafeteria.

But time has a funny way of changing not just our tastes, but how we taste.

These days, simpler is better. Ask me what my go-to donut is with a morning coffee, and I’ll tell you without hesitation, it’s probably a sour cream cake donut or a plain glazed cake donut. You know the kind: shiny, rustic-looking, a little jagged around the edges, like something Grandma might’ve fried up on an old cast iron skillet when you were a kid.

My go-to these days
An Old Fashioned Cake Donut

There’s something about that crumbly, slightly crisp exterior giving way to the soft inside that just hits right. It’s humble. It’s honest. It doesn’t need a fancy filling or a drizzle of anything. Just a donut, pure and simple, doing what a donut does best, keeping coffee company.

Now, don’t get me wrong, a Krispy Kreme Original Glazed, fresh off the line, still warm and melting in your mouth, is a whole different story. I could down four of those before my coffee even cools off. (Which is exactly why I do my best to avoid driving past the place, for fear of seeing the “Hot Donuts Now” sign lit up. There’s just no winning that battle.)

Somewhere along the line, my sweet tooth didn’t exactly fade, it just got wiser. I started slowing down, actually tasting what I was eating instead of just chasing the next sugar high. Maybe that’s part of getting older.. realizing that the joy isn’t in how much flavor you can cram into one bite, but in how much appreciation you can get out of something simple done right.

So yeah, give me the plain old-fashioned cake donut with a cup of hot coffee any day. The kind that reminds you of early mornings and simpler times, when a donut was just a donut, not a photo op.

What about you? Has your favorite donut changed over the years, or do you still go straight for the filled, frosted, and sprinkled kind?