This past weekend, Andrew and I did a donut ‘taste-off’ with the Nyes (minus Mrs. Nye, who had to go to church early that morning), something we’d been talking about for quite awhile.  Mr. Nye has always raved about the peanut donuts at our local Tops, and–of course–Paula’s is a sensation for sure.  I’d been excited about this event since we started planning it.

We decided to include both Dunkin’ Donuts and Tim Hortons as ‘controls’ of sorts, as well as Tops and Paula’s, and threw in two more ‘dark horses’ for good measure: Donut Kraze, a tiny 24-hour donut & coffee place Andrew and I discovered and hit-up every once in awhile when we’re in Buffalo, and Eileen’s, a West Seneca bakery the Nyes like that makes excellent birthday cakes.

Donuts to be taste-tested included peanut and plain glazed, as peanut donuts are the Nyes’ favorite, and glazed are Andrews.’  He’s a picky one, that man. We ended up with five total for each flavor category, as Tim’s didn’t have a peanut donut and Tops didn’t have a glazed.

Mrs. Nye prepped some of the donuts before she left so we could have a psuedo-blind tasting:

I facilitated the tasting, beginning with peanut. I cut one donut from each location into small pieces and any extra was lined up on a platter in the order in which it was presented in case people wanted more of a particular one.  We each scored the donuts as we liked (Professor Adam used letter grades, I used a scale from 1-10 and gave each a range with comments).

Andrew tallied up all the scores–can’t you just see the steam coming out of his ears??

Here are the results, ranked from BEST to WORST:

Peanut: Donut Kraze, Eileen’s, Paula’s, Tops, Dunkin’ Donuts.

Glazed: Donut Kraze, Eileen’s, Tim Horton’s, Paula’s, Dunkin’ Donuts.

Boy, aren’t we glad we included both Donut Kraze and Eileen’s!  In reviewing my personal notes on the peanut donuts (I didn’t really participate in the glazed testing, as I don’t really like them anyway and didn’t want to waste the calories.), I liked Eileen’s the best, followed by Donut Kraze, which I noted to have a ‘peanut butter’ flavor, followed by Paula’s, which had a hint of cinnamon.

We also got to taste a couple other offerings from these places, including French Crullers from Dunkin’ and Tim’s (both of which were awful–way too much glaze), Paula’s red velvet (my personal favorite–basically a red velvet cake in the shape of a donut) and a cinnamon ‘bun.’  I also love sour cream donuts, and I can only assume our winning locations would be the best places to get them.

Thankfully, we pawned off all the leftovers on family members after church, so I wasn’t plagued by donuts all week, praise God. Also, neither of our winning locations (Donut Kraze and Eileen’s) are in East Aurora, nor are they even places we drive by very often, so there isn’t really a danger of starting a habit of stopping for donuts.

Now, if only I could find that adorable donut-shaped pillow I saw in the window at the Toy Loft in town a few weeks ago…