Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Food

The Donut Diaries – Fourth and Fifth Nights

Each night of Hanukkah, donut blogger and connoisseur Temim Fruchter will share one of America’s best donuts to devour during the holiday. Click here to read last night’s installment and check back each day for a different city’s top donut.

Dynamo Donut, San Francisco

I have three words for you: chocolate rosewater glazed. I couldn’t believe this place makes a donut that involves rosewater. Not to mention donuts featuring ingredients as haute gourmet as saffron, rosemary and lemon zest. Though, it’s a bit of a toss-up – Dynamo’s neighbor is an adorable classic donuttery called The Jelly Donut, whose fares will only put you out circa 85 cents and are good in the best old-fashioned-donut way. But if you’re susceptible to the flirtation of whimsical craft donuts and swanky ingredients (as I suppose I am) it seems that Dynamo needs to be on your holiday to-do list.

Hanukkah relevance: These donuts are like tiny wrapped gifts. Masterpieces, really.

Fractured Prune: Washington, DC

The first thing you need to know is that there is not a decent donut to be found anywhere in DC. (I’m happy to be challenged on this front; as a DC-area native I am, frankly, deeply ashamed of this reality.) While Rockville Town Square does not remotely count as DC, the local franchise Fractured Prune has gained much attention in DC. Inexplicably mascoted by something that looks eerily like a California Raisin, Fractured Prune’s donut is a different beast from a donut entirely. It is heavy and moist and dense French-toast-esque, almost like you’re eating it mid-deep-fry. For the perfect kid-in-a-candy-store effect, Fractured Prune donuts are served piping hot with a combination of your choice of toppings. A peanut butter glazed donut with chocolate chips and a honey glaze with cinnamon sugar are likely to put you in a donut haze for at least two hours.

Hanukkah relevance: For one donut, these suckers had enough oil to last the equivalent at least 8 donuts.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.