The Best Dozen: all donuts

The Best Dozen: Numbers

park side eatery donuts in box

Park Side Eatery had some of the most expensive donuts by price and price per weight -- but two of its donuts made it into the ultimate dozen.

By Daniel B.

Think of it like a bonus track: During his tasting tour of Capital Region donut shops, Daniel compiled a bunch of numbers about the donuts -- weights, prices, scores.

So we thought it'd be fun to share the numbers, along with a little a summary from Daniel.

All the donuts in one table

There's a table of all the donut numbers above large format -- click or scroll all the way up.

Daniel's summary

Let's consider for a moment that over the past several weeks, I've evaluated 141 different donuts. In the process, a lot of data has been collected. For exampleL

+ The average weight of these donuts was 100 grams (or 3.5 ounces for those not interested in such precision)

+ The lightest donut, weighing in a mere 47 grams, was the unfortunate French cruller from Dunkin' Donuts.

+ The heaviest was the massive 239 gram Triple Chocolate signature donut from Market Bistro, which was over a half pound of disappointment.

But weight is really only interesting when combined with price to get a better understanding of value.

+ The average price ounce for all the donuts was 25 cents per ounce

+ However, the Shop Rite Boston cream (which was a top pick from the grocer) was the best value of them all at a mere 11 cents per ounce.

+ The unfortunate croissant donut from Dunkin' came it at a ghastly 84 cents per ounce followed by the (again, unfortunate) French cruller at 45 cents per ounce.

+ The top rated maple bacon from Park Side Eatery seems reasonable in comparison at 40 cents per ounce.

+ Value darling Schuyler Bakery, where donuts are only 50 cents each still comes in under the line with its best donuts ranging from 17 to 20 cents per ounce.

+ And Nibble, whose $20 dozen may seem a little jaw dropping to some, comes in just over the line with a range of 26 to 36 cents per ounce.

Overall, there were 21 donuts which I considered to be the "best of the bunch." Now you may be going through your notes and saying, "Hey, I only counted 20." Well, there was one more donut that I had to go back and try for myself -- the jelly-filled version of Hannaford's croissant donut, which made it into the ultimate dozen.

+ Of all the "best of the bunch" donuts, 7 were cake donuts

+ Six of them were filled donuts.

+ Five of them were yeast donuts

+ And 3 of them were specialty donuts.

As it turns out, none of the best filled donuts were filled with jelly.

Daniel B. is the proprietor of the FUSSYlittleBLOG.

More from The Best Dozen

+ The Best Dozen: Ultimate Dozen
+ Dunkin' Donuts
+ Nibble in Troy
+ Hannaford
+ Schuyler Bakery in Watervliet
+ Cider Belly in Albany
+ ShopRite in Colonie
+ Stewart's
+ Cookie Factory in Troy
+ Market Bistro in Latham
+ Park Side Eatery in Saratoga Springs
+ Bella Napoli in Troy


Thank you Daniel B. This grand tour de donut has been anthemic experience that is unlikely to be repeated. Seeing that video of the marathon runner who collapses, but crawls to the finish line and finishes third, cannot help remind me of you.

Now I just have to wake up early enough one of these Saturday mornings to toddle down to the Park Side Eatery and score one of their maple bacon donuts.

C'mon, AOA -- stick a fork in this now stale doughnut series, it's done. This is a rehash of a recap, with a lot of not very enlightening statistics. (I'd at least want to learn the calories, sugars, and saturated fat in each doughnut.)

Not surprised that Nibble, despite being expensive doughnuts, were almost an average price per ounce. Those things are hefty!

Here's a number you didn't include. How much weight did you gain from the 141 donuts?

@chrisck - Oh, please don't suggest I now have to do a stale donut series. Sure, they can be refreshed with an egg and milk batter, but I'm done with donuts for a while.

FWIW I would have loved to pull some of the comparative nutritional values. But one of the nice things about independent donut shops is that they don't have to provide such ugly details. Dunkin' on the other hand is compelled to do so. In fact, it was in reviewing their nutritional info pages where I discovered the chain uses konjac flour in their cake donuts. I'd never seen that before.

@C - Amazingly, I seem to have only put on about three pounds over the course of the entire series. But that time span also included the holidays, a meat-tastic trip to Pennsylvania, the annual rite of Super Bowl gorging, the Tour de Tavern Pie, two deep fried hamburgers from Swifty's, and a host of other bad decisions.

Clearly, I blame all of my weight gain on the donuts.

@chrisck - nobody uses forks with doughnuts, so your entire comment is malarkey

If you are a true donut lover, do you really ask about calories? Do you ask for nutritional information? I think not. Donuts aren't good for you. We all know it. If you are going to eat them, you forget about nutritional content and simply enjoy them.

Most donut shops don't post their nutritional data because it is bad for sales. They aren't in business to chase their customers out the door before they order. So critiquing the reviewer for not posting nutritional info is foolish. Good job Daniel!

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