I’ve always wanted to be a food blogger. For a few reasons. First, I love to write. Second, I love to try new places. Third, I love to eat! I love good food. My husband and I both do. Frankly, we’ve raised an adventurous eater in Nathan, too. His biological father is from a Middle Eastern culture, so he’s had a real variety of foods in his young 14 years. Kevin and I both like to experiment and try new food too, so Nathan has been raised to prefer things like sushi and lamb’s head stew rather than chicken tenders and hot dogs. Don’t get me wrong. He eats everything. In fact, he loves mac-n-cheese, but he’s just not afraid to try different things and that’s because his parents are adventurous eaters and because we’re not short order cooks. If we’re having Ahi for dinner, we’re having Ahi for dinner – not two Ahi tunas and a cheeseburger for the kid.
Anyway, this post is not about our family and our eating habits. It’s about food. It’s about fattening, round, gooey delicious food. DONUTS!
I personally have never been a donut fanatic. I love sweets and do love donuts, but over the years, I’ve been somewhat judgmental about donuts. They’re fattening. They’re full of sugar. For someone who has always loved food, been indifferent to exercise and struggled to keep the extra weight off after having a baby, donuts are the antichrist of foods. However, over the years, since living here in York, PA, I’ve snubbed the local donut joint and heralded Dunkin Donuts as the one and only donut for me.
It’s time to set the record straight (enter Maple Donuts).
The other day, I came up with the idea of comparing two or three of my favorite donuts. A blueberry cake, a chocolate cake, and a Boston Crème donut. One each, from both Dunkin Donuts and Maple Donuts. This idea came to me after woofing down about a dozen donut holes, a friend of mine at work, brought in last Wednesday. They were Maple Donut holes and they were scrumptious! As an aside: Why donut shops call the little round balls punched out from the center of a donut, the “holes” I’ll never understand. These are the balls left over after creating the donut that DOES have the hole. No comprende. Shouldn’t these be called donut balls? I can hear my teenage boy chuckling now – so, never mind.
Anyway, I came home from work with this great idea for a taste test to see which donut was better. We agreed to go to Dunkin Donuts and Maple Donuts to get 2 each of our favorite donuts from each place and compare them. It didn’t go exactly as planned but I can say I’ve reached a definite conclusion.
Kevin, Nathan and I drove to Maple Donuts, which is just 10 minutes from the house (Danger! Danger!). We bellied up to the counter – the same counter I joked with Nathan about a few months ago: “I don’t get this donut bar concept. What do people do at 8 a.m. in the morning? Belly up to the donut bar and get their feed on? Aren’t we all fat enough?”
After visiting the Maple Donuts, located on West Market Street, in York, PA, I can say that I finally get it. This place is far more than a place for people to pack on the pounds. It’s a real down-to-earth, donut diner that specializes in amazing donuts, coffee and homemade sandwiches and soups – 24 hours a day.
We bellied up and ordered two donuts each. I ordered the S ‘mores donut and a Chocolate donut with Peanut Butter Frosting, Kevin got a Chocolate Frosted, Chocolate donut and a Frosted French donut, Nathan got a Boston Crème and a regular glazed donut.
(Kevin and Nathan, post consumption)
The idea was to eat them just to enjoy them because we’d never been to Maple Donuts before, and then take home a Blueberry donut, a Chocolate Cake Donut with glaze and a Boston Crème donut to compare with the same donuts that we would later buy at Dunkin Donuts. What happened was that we just decided that Maple Donuts was so superior to Dunkin, that we wouldn’t even bother with the trip to Dunkin. End of story. It wasn’t just the freshly, hand-made and decorated donuts that made the difference for us, it was the personality of the Maple Donuts store altogether.
Overall, the attendants there, that morning, served us enthusiastically, making us feel welcome and like part of the Maple Donuts regulars, even though this was our first visit there.
Shaylyn, one of the counter attendants informed us about maple donuts’ name. She asked us if we knew where the name Maple Donuts came from. I responded that I guessed it came from their “star donut”, the maple glazed donut. She told me that was a typical answer, but that the name actually was given because the first Maple Donuts was opened, on Maple Street, in York, PA. I told her that we were here to sample and compare the donuts here with Dunkin Donuts’. She made sure to tell us that their donuts were all hand dipped and decorated 24 hours a day.
Carrie Beck, the regional manager took this picture for us, of their donut gems on production belt:
In talking with her, I mentioned the comments I’d made to Nathan in the past about “bellying up to the donut bar” and she told me that it really is a communal place – “Like a neighborhood bar but instead of alcohol we serve coffee and donuts!” I believe her. The parking lot is always full.
Two other attendants, Missy and Marie, gave us a little more information about their 24-hour menu. They serve BLTs, egg sandwiches, tuna, ham and chicken sandwiches, and soups, along with their freshly made donuts and their own Maple Donuts coffee blends.
The factory just behind the donut shop on Market Street, in York, pumps out mass quantities of “holey” deliciousness and there is another factory location in Eerie, PA as well. The donuts are sold in gas stations, convenient stores, grocery stores and other places all over PA.
Cupcake joints were springing up all over the place in a trendy “how do ya do” sort of way in the last few years, in an effort to introduce a new dessert concept and start a new craze – but you know what? Donuts have been around for ages and there are some places that just NEED to be discovered. Maple Donuts is one of them.
If you haven’t tried them yet, stop in. You will not be disappointed.
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