16 Donuts At Dunkin', Ranked Worst To Best
America runs on what? You know the answer. Dunkin', previously Dunkin' Donuts, is a great reason to get out of bed in the morning. And while you can drive through for a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich or a decadent coffee creation, the donuts themselves will always have our hearts (even if they no longer appear in the official company title). That's why we're testing and ranking them for you today.
At Dunkin', you never know what you're gonna get. Each location will have a slightly different menu, and that menu comes and goes over the course of the day. While we would have liked to try every single flavor, that would have meant a cross-country road trip. Instead, we chose a sample of pretty standard flavors to test. We can't do ALL the work for you.
Time to get things moving! Please sit back and enjoy this ranking of the Dunkin' donuts we selected, from worst to best. We only wish you could taste them through your screen.
16. Lemon
This isn't the donut for us. We want to be clear here: We are not saying the lemon is fundamentally bad. We absolutely love lemon pound cake or a chilly fresh lemonade on a blistering summer's day. Lemon has a time and place, but in this ranking, we argue that none of those places are found inside a Dunkin' donut.
Now, one of us liked this donut, but for all the same reasons that we ended up ranking it this low: The bitter, bright, pungent taste of a lemon is a distinct contrast to the sweet, dense Dunkin' donut. We think that it's not only a contrast, though, but a challenge. The two are at war with each other, and though Dunkin' tries to even everything out by sweetening up the filling as per a lemon meringue pie, it ends up tasting a bit like a burnt can of premade pie filling you can find on store shelves. And it has that slightly dreaded powdered sugar coating that, we shall continuously dissect, which is more trouble than it's worth most of the time. Oh well. If you're a big lemon-head, you'll like it, and if you're not, you won't choose it over a jelly or cream core.
15. Powdered
Ahh yes, the powdered donut. A bigger, fluffier, at least slightly fresher version of a classic Hostess treat. One of our taste testers groaned amiably when realizing it was time to taste this one ... and she was wearing black. Seriously, stand back as far as possible when cutting into it, and designate two or maybe three fingers to use if eating with your hands. Also, keep a lightly damp napkin within reach at all times.
Every once in a blue moon, we'll get a nice, moist powdered donut that makes the effort worth it. Most of the time, today included, it's dry on all fronts. Dry flakes of powdered sugar get all over everything, with a dry cake donut underneath. And with that dusty coating, dipping is hard — unless you want powdered sugar snowfalls on your coffee cup. Yes, we're being harsh, but without any filling to ramp up the excitement, a simple powdered donut is usually a miss.
14. Glazed
In many ways, this is THE Dunkin' donut. Even Jennifer Lopez seems to think so. As ubiquitous as the happy pink strawberry frosted with sprinkles is, or your old-fashioned arguments, the glazed donut offers that basic yeast donut that everyone loves and coats it in a sticky seal of see-through glaze.
Now before you start hating us for ranking it so low, wrangle up an image of the last time you had a glazed Dunkin' donut. Was it even that good, or were you just happy to have free donuts at an otherwise dour office meeting? Was it delicious or was it just, well, there? Because, in all honesty, we aren't big fans. You can eat this whole thing and feel unsatisfied due to the mushy texture and barely-there flavor. The primary taste is pure sugar, plus we got some notes of the cardboard box thrown in for good measure. When dunked, it inevitably sops up too much of the coffee. We would recommend Krispy Kreme's glazed donuts over Dunkin's, but before you get too upset, remember that we have many more delicious varieties of Dunkin' donuts to come.
13. French Cruller
Look at you, all fancy and ordering a French cruller at Dunkin'! There isn't much "French" about this donut except in the name, and maybe the ~extra~ elaborate details of the braided edges. Taste- and texture-wise, it's aiming to mimic the light, porous shell of an eclair or profiterole. We're arguing that it's actually better than a glazed. Here's why. Unlike in our brownies (fight us), we actually love all the edges on a donut. The center of a donut is, literally, hollow. It's nonexistent. Philosophically, donuts are all edges.
Anyway, let's get back on track. We were surprised by how many discernible differences there were between this donut and the classic glazed except. It's much eggier than a glazed, and it's quite stiff, but that might not be a good thing to some. Still, we gave it extra points due to the textural contrast of those icing-laden ridges. It's also very, very pretty (prettier to look at than to eat, someone said). We love Dunkin', but its cruller could use some "je ne sais quois." Maybe if you can't go all the way to France to pick up a cruller, your next move would be one of the best donut places across the U.S.
12. Vanilla Creme
This baby's a lot. The vanilla creme donut sports a lot of sweetness and is undeniably nothing but a fluffy, pillowy, powdery sugar bomb filled with a creamy core of more vanilla-y sugar bomb-ness. We don't have an issue with this on principle if it floats your boat. You do you. One of us thinks this is the perfect go-all-out donut for times when your sweet tooth wants what it wants.
This one seems to be posing as all coy and low-maintenance in comparison to the suave Boston Kreme when in reality, it's alarmingly high-maintenance. Messy powdered sugar outside? Check. Messy, sticky, gooey filling that makes the powdered sugar stick even more to your fingers? Check. If you're at a work event and they have Dunkin' donuts, don't even think about choosing this one. You have been warned. But still, that little vanilla icing tail coming out of the donut, hinting at what's inside, is definitely sometimes too enticing to resist, and if you love cake-batter flavors, this one is essentially full of store-bought white-cake frosting.
11. Chocolate Frosted with Sprinkles
When you think of a donut, is the chocolate frosted with sprinkles what comes to mind? After all, it does have the honorable status of being the donut emoji, at least on an Apple iPhone. That's got to be helpful for branding, huh? This donut is a favorite of kids everywhere and a great choice for a reliable Dunkin' experience. The plush, yeasted base is simple and sweet, slightly glazed, topped with a smear of simple chocolate frosting, and scattered with rainbow sprinkles. It's a very cute donut for sure, nailing the visual appeal.
We like it just as much as we ever have, but as expected, were not blown away. We did discover something new about it, though. You know exactly what you're getting here, and though it's not as delicious or creative as others that are higher on the list, there is a nice diversity present when you really think about it: It's a plain donut, but with a smudge of fudgy chocolate frosting and rainbow sprinkles. In a way, it has more going on than the seemingly bolder vanilla creme, which just pushes that white creamy profile as far as it can go. It's all about perspective.
10. Old Fashioned
Yes, we have to address the obvious elephant in the room: The old-fashioned pretty well translates to "boring" at first glance, and to some taste-testers, at the second taste, too. It's dry, like the powdered, but it does get a few more points in sneaky ways. First of all, it's sincerely less messy and infinitely better for dunking in coffee. Second, the bare-bones treatment allowed us to actually taste more of that oily, fried taste that is what the "old-fashioned" appeal hinged on, at least for us.
Sure, it might not sound like a good thing to taste more grease, but in a donut, it helps cut the sugary sweetness and remind us why these aren't just round, dense but also somewhat flimsy little cakes. We would never choose an old-fashioned donut over others that ranked higher on this list, but we can totally understand why unashamedly old-fashioned people might. For a donut without all the fuss and feathers, this isn't bad.
9. Strawberry Frosted with Sprinkles
The strawberry frosted with sprinkles is probably the cutest of the whole bunch we bought to test and looks particularly festive at a kid's party or girls' night. You don't need us to go into the reliable yeast donut again, which is the same base as the vanilla frosted with sprinkles or the chocolate frosted with sprinkles. So, no, there's no extra strawberry flavor in the donut itself. We can only hope that Dunkin' releases a fresh-tasting strawberry cake donut with this sweet, candy-like frosting on top. One taster called it a strawberry milkshake poured all over a donut, and we think that's a spot-on way to describe the taste of the pink icing.
Overall, we give this donut high marks for its playful and everlasting appeal, plus the frosting that is a deliciously one-of-a-kind Dunkin' experience. If you love the flavor of strawberries but prefer them on the sweeter side, strawberry jam is always a winner. Try making your own easy jam that's so much better than store-bought the next strawberry season, and spread it on your favorite baked (or fried) goods. Did you know that you can order your Dunkin' donuts without sprinkles? What would anyone do that, though? We're puzzled and open to counterarguments.
8. Double Chocolate
The double chocolate is an unglazed chocolate glazed donut topped with glaze. Allow us to explain ourselves before you think we sound too, ahem, unglued. The two chocolate cake donuts are the same. There's a slight chewiness and spongy, springy texture with a light, malt-like cocoa flavor. This donut is quite naked, however, at least on the bottom. With no glaze sealing everything in, it's a little less moist, and much better eaten within a few hours of purchase or after refrigeration.
It's pretty close to a store-bought chocolate cake, with no donut involved, because it's simply a cakey base with chocolatey, fudgy frosting. If there were no hole punched out of the middle, it could pass as a slice of sub-par grocery store fare. After some verbal processing, we realized that it made us think of the old-fashioned Dunkin' donut, but in chocolate form. It's nothing special. But hey, that chocolate icing is nice! We enjoyed a thicker layer of the topping than we found in any other chocolate-topped donut, and sometimes that's what we all want: Just a stout wall of thick chocolate frosting, with the cake as a decent afterthought.
7. Maple Frosted
We have a soft spot for this donut. Like the forthcoming glazed blueberry, it brings breakfast vibes, which is a fun energy regardless of the position of the sun in the sky. Don't let that dictate when you partake of your donuts, people! Maple syrup, like honey, is naturally sweet. You can often swap it in for regular cane sugar when making baked goods like banana bread or muffins. Now we don't think that the sugar in this glaze is entirely replaced by maple syrup, nor do we even know if there's real maple syrup involved at all. We don't mind if it's just the breakfast stuff, though. It tastes great.
The rich, buttery flavor of maple is a fun twist on regular sweet icing and a nice way to keep a donut just as sweet but slightly funky, too. It's the vanilla frosted with sprinkles donut, but with a maple tinge to the frosting and no sprinkles. True, all of us are biased because we are unashamedly Pancakes for Dinner People, and are always happy when breakfast leans more sweet than savory. Give us a full stack of pancakes drenched in maple syrup, or give us this donut, and give it to us at any time of day. It's all good.
6. Boston Kreme
Which of the two chocolate-topped, cream-filling, yeast donut reigns supreme: The frosted vanilla creme or the Boston Kreme? We will gladly vouch for Boston Kreme any day of the week. Upon tasting it, we agreed that this is a more balanced treat than the frosted vanilla creme thanks to the custardy and slightly eggy, as opposed to just sweet, creamy, gooey decadence inside.
We also discovered that the chocolate ganache-inspired glaze on top seemed more velvety and luscious. Though Ben & Jerry's has discovered the merits of Boston Cream Pie and incorporated it into its ice creams, Dunkin' was on board long before. We think this donut is plenty rich without a side of ice cream as long as you get one with enough filling. That's always the goal, right? No one wants an under-filled donut. When the proportions are on point, this donut is one of the very best you can buy at Dunkin'. That custard ... yep, we'd eat it with a spoon.
5. Apple N' Spice
The Apple N' Spice donut is probably the one we were most surprised to pick up. In all honesty, none of us could remember having purchased this donut before on a Dunkin' run or even seeing it as an option. Various iterations on chocolate and vanilla are to be expected, as well as some pretty pink strawberry icing on occasion. But it came as a shock that Dunkin' offers an apple donut year-round, and doubly shocking, it comes with warming spices. We were interested to see — sorry, taste — whether the apple filling tasted more like a home-baked pie or a can of applesauce.
All in all, we like the hints of cinnamon and nutmeg that keeps the mixture a little fresh and peppery, achieving that key component you're probably tired of hearing ... cutting through the sweetness. It is sweet, and it's a little glue-like and cloying in a similar way to the jelly donut. We like the classic jelly filling more since it's brighter and fruitier, but we did love the cinnamon-sugar coating. For some autumn vibes, go for it, and you may be surprised by how underrated it is.
4. Apple Fritter
Dunkin' does apple flavors really, really well. Like the coffee roll, this next item is not necessarily a donut. But it's fried dough, so what in the world would it not count as one? Sounds like a donut to us! A fritter differs from a donut in that it has no hole in the middle. Instead, it gets dropped into hot oil with a laissez-faire attitude and less focus placed on achieving a neat, round shape. Fritters can come in all sorts of flavors, even in savory forms like these corn fritters.
But the apple is the most popular, and we can understand why. The chunks get all caramelized and melt seamlessly into the batter, adding moisture without weighing it down. And the filling is generous, gooey, and even more caramelized. We seriously enjoyed this, dare we say, donut. We tasted more of that lovely fried flavor than in any other Dunkin' donut, and particularly enjoyed it when warmed up a bit. If you have an air fryer, that's the way to go. It's also huge, so you really get your money's worth. The next order of business; make our own.
3. Jelly
Is putting the jelly donut this high a controversial stance? Even if it offends people, we're sticking by our rating. Though it's perhaps the single messiest donut you can consume, every bite is pure, childlike joy. First, we have the base donut itself, which is definitely somewhat dry. We like to give it the benefit of the doubt and call it compensation for the jammy inside, but it's probably just the price you pay for buying your donuts from Dunkin' as opposed to your local bakeshop. That local bakeshop might also be stirring up an artisan filling of reduced fresh strawberries or raspberries. Don't expect that from a Dunkin' jelly donut. Instead, expect that singular experience of the mystery red berry jelly, oozing out of the center with so much sticky sweetness that it barely resembles fresh fruit.
We unashamedly love it, though a few bites from the middle are usually all we need to satisfy our taste buds. That sparkly, non-powdered sugar is a fun change of pace that none of the other donuts have adopted. We love this jelly because it's somehow both a decadent sweet treat and a playful arrow aimed at the hearts of kids of all ages. We wouldn't have it every day, but whenever there's one in the donut box, we suddenly recall a need for more jelly donuts in our everyday life.
2. Glazed Blueberry
One taste-tester noted that this donut brings up nostalgia in a different way than the glazed or vanilla frosted with sprinkles do, and it's because it reminds her of weekend mornings with her mom making blueberry pancakes. And that's exactly it. These donuts taste more breakfast-y and less dessert-y thanks to the blueberries alone. It's still a donut, and the blueberries are quite fake indeed, but there's a lovely, warm, wholesomeness to it that reads as sunshiny long mornings.
We think Dunkin' is missing an easy opportunity, actually: Put some maple icing (as seen on the aforementioned maple frosted) on a glazed blueberry donut, and you've got an all-new blueberry pancake donut. You're welcome, Dunkin'. We're huge fans of this funny little donut, and even though we always looked down upon it as kids, now that we're adults, it's the cream of the crop. It's a lot like the glazed chocolate, but slightly less waxy. The brazen fruitiness popping out of a simple donut is everything.
1. Sour Cream
Are you surprised to see the humble, under-the-radar sour cream donut in the top spot on this highly competitive list? We weren't surprised at all to put it here. Most of us already agreed upon the merits of the sour cream donut from Dunkin', but, of course, we had to try it again to test our preconceptions. We were so happy to find out that it holds up. Every crispy and craggy edge, airy and tangy interior bite, and a touch of perfectly allotted glaze just hit differently. To dive deeper into just what makes this donut so special, let's compare it to some of the others. First: the glazed. This is the obvious first comparison, and many customers probably don't see why they would buy a sour cream instead. But tasting the two back-to-back leads to an instant recognition that one is superior.
The texture of the sour cream is so much more substantial, still not dense but with a nice chew that the floppy glaze can't come close to. And that aforementioned tang adds class and contrast. It also has that hint of "fried" wickedness that the old-fashioned donut brings, just with none of the dryness and the best anytime-of-day glaze that doesn't leave you desperate for a leafy green. Clearly, we could wax poetic about this donut all day, but don't worry, we'll stop right here. If you haven't had the sour cream donut yet, we invite you to choose it.