The definition of the carnival donut is very simple: Take yeast dough with egg yolk, knead it into a ball, bake it in clarified butter at 160 degrees and then fill it with apricot jam using a piping nozzle. So much for the theory, because of course the carnival donut is an almost inexhaustible theme with variations. And that’s not even talking about those pranksters who fill the donut with mustard instead of jam. Every year, Munich’s pastry chefs come up with new creations that aren’t always top notch, but definitely show ingenuity. This year, the SZ tasting editors have tried to subject both very traditional and particularly unusual donuts to a thorough test – without claiming to be complete, but as always to the best of our knowledge and belief.
Light and airy
The donuts that Katharina Stadler sells in the Kustermann pastry shop are a “dream”.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
Confectionery Kustermann: If you walk down Lindwurmstraße south of Goetheplatz these days, you will come across a striking number of people with boxes full of donuts. They come from Café Kustermann, but if you want to buy some yourself, it can happen that there aren’t any left: They’re a hit here at the moment, and that’s why things get pretty busy in the in-house bakery. This is not surprising, because since Katharina Stadler and her team took over the pastry shop and café in 2018, word has gotten around that the best donuts far and wide are here. This is particularly true of the classic with apricot jam: it is light and airy, despite the compact crust dusted with powdered sugar – if Bavarians knew the word “fluffy”, they would reserve it for this donut. With the first bite, the pastry feels pleasantly soft and almost melts on the palate. That tempts, God be lamented, to devour: because then there’s the wonderfully sweet jam… A dream. Incidentally, the quality of this baked product is also proven when you manage not to clean up the freshly bought donuts in one go, but save some for the next day. Donuts from conventional mass production often only have the consistency of Styrofoam by the second day. But the Kustermanns have hardly lost any of their lightness. bonus point! Marcelinus Storm
Successful venture
There is a donut with a latte macchiato filling at Brotmanufaktur Schmidt.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
Bread factory Schmidt: Carnival is a season for children, and the most penetrating of all children’s questions is therefore allowed: Why? Why are they filling donuts with all sorts of trendy stuff instead of apricot jam or plum jam? So why, insanely, with latte macchiato, that breakfast drink that gets little kids south of the Alps hooked on the caffeine addiction that keeps Italy going? Macchiato, really? At Brotmanufaktur Schmidt, of which there are 14 in Munich, they bake excellent traditional donuts, i.e. with fluffy dough and lots of sweet and fruity plum jam. But also, yes: latte macchiato. A coffee bean crowns the donut, glazed sugar covers it – icing sugar could possibly spoil the cashmere coats of Lehelbogenhaidhausen’s cappuccino customers. A daring bite – and a very pleasant surprise: The cream filling is wonderfully airy, light and sweet, with just that hint of coffee flavor that makes the whole thing special. It’s very well composed. So the answer is: why not? Alois Gudmund
Neat debris
Bakery Neulinger: We didn’t ask him specifically, but if only for reasons related to the country, Markus Söder would have to bite into a donut with a pine mark when he parades his carnival costumes in Veitshöchheim in Franconia every year. help mark? Yes, the Franks fill their donuts with it, according to the old custom. But that’s just as little understood in Munich as some of the prime minister’s decisions. Therefore translated into the local idiom: Hips are rose hips. And the Neulinger bakery praises their own as rose hip donuts. Even in the display case you can see: there are a lot of rubble, 80 grams of dough weight according to their own information, everything organic, only wheat flour, butter, eggs, milk, sugar, yeast, salt – by the way, a lot of butter tastes good. Of course, Neulinger bakes donuts of various flavors, with apricot jam or plum puree, sprinkled with poppy seeds under the powdered sugar layer. The dough of the rosehip version was actually buttery and soft, and the filling has a subtle sweet and sour freshness. That should suffice. To praise even more would be to carry help to Veitshöchheim. Alois Gudmund
Champagne at noon
Woerner’s: Champagne is just as much a part of Munich as beer and roast pork. So it’s no wonder that various bakeries have been offering champagne donuts for a long time. However, Pep Rooney had to find out several times that the one from Woerner’s Confiserie und Café is apparently quite popular when he wanted to get a copy at Marienplatz after work. Unfortunately, there weren’t any left, they said, so there was nothing else to do but to secure one of the coveted champagne donuts one day at noon, along with a yeast dumpling donut, so to speak, as a dessert. The champagne model already impressed with the wafer-thin shavings of white chocolate as a topping, when the bite into the delicate and airy dough revealed the fine champagne crème (which actually also contains champagne), it was clear that the journey to the Marienplatz was more than worth it during the lunch break. The yeast dumpling fritters with poppy seeds on top were also largely convincing, although they don’t have much in common with the classic snack on a ski holiday. And if the delicious plum jam filling had been dosed a little more generously, we wouldn’t have been angry either. Pep Rooney
Fast booster
There could have been a little more jam for the donut classic from Wimmer’s private bakery.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
Private Bakery Wimmer: The Wimmer bakery, which describes itself as “Private”, has 55 branches. So there’s a good chance that one of them will be around when the winter weather is just too cold and nasty again and the wrapped-up body is crying out for sun – or alternatively for sugar. And there they are already in the display case in all colors and, oddly enough, shapes. Some of them are so strangely oval in shape that, because they are not round, they seem to be completely missing the actually round donut. So confused, we saved ourselves to the classic, i.e. round, powdered with sugar and filled with apricot jam. But where was she? It wasn’t until we took our fourth bite into a rather dry, overly firm and unfortunately a bit stale dough that we got to the sweet filling. This is also surprising because this donut was not exactly one of the largest in the city and the jam was not supposed to offer enough space for such hide-and-seek games. After all, it was a quick and comparatively cheap booster for the blood sugar level. But not much more. Alois Gudmund
Correct donut
Loose dough, but a bit dry: the Hofpfisterei donuts.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
Hofpfisterei: They are the most serious of their kind, which is because they perform so perfectly correctly. Each type of donut from the Hofpfisterei has a differentiated internet profile in which the word eco is the dominant word. We took what the branches on Naupliastrasse and Freischützstrasse offered, the “Eco Rosehip Donuts” and the “Eco Chocolate Donuts”, each weighing about 80 grams, loaded with 387 and 363 calories. Their producer called them vile fat pastries, but they hadn’t got too much fat on them, and the dough of both of them was fluffy, but rather dry. The chocolate donut had a flawless dark glaze with white decorative scribbles on it and a small, intense chocolate cream filling, nothing dripped when eaten. The classic version, lightly sprinkled with granulated sugar, wasn’t as elegant, but it did pack a big punch of jam. When we bit into it, the sinfully sweet Hätschi-Bätschi mass flowed over our fingers, delicious and utterly incorrect. Johanna N. Hummel
A touch of New York
Bakery and confectionery Riedmair: Every time we’ve recently walked past the Riedmair bakery and confectionery branch in Untergiesing, we’ve always had to curb our craving for the sweet kick so as not to overdo it with the calories. But he always smiled at us through the window – cheeky, with yellow and green trim and a NYC label on the frosting, which stands for New York City. Then, when we couldn’t help but hit it, we learned it was the “NYC Lime Cheesecake Donut” that abstinence didn’t stand a chance against. Cheesecake always sounds good, and New York is said to have the best of them. So we were all the more excited about the creation. In fact, at Riedmair they come quite close to US cheesecake with a homemade Philadelphia lime cream, the mixture is refreshing, subtly sweet and sour and generously dosed. Unfortunately, the dough of the copy bought on Claude-Lorrain-Strasse was a bit too firm for the taste of the testers. We prefer a real cheesecake that melts on the tongue. Pep Rooney