8 Donut Chain Chocolate Donuts, Ranked

It's hard to imagine anything more indulgent than a chocolate donut. This dessert combines one of the richest and most complicated sweet flavors with heavy fried dough. When they're good, they're balanced in flavor, hot, and fresh, with a chewy texture that melts in your mouth and pairs perfectly with a strong cup of coffee.

Just about every donut chain offers its own variant on the chocolate donut, but some chains undeniably do it better than others. So, to help you guide your decision of which chocolate donut to eat, we personally tried and ranked eight chocolate donuts from major national chains to see which was the best.

Since a "chocolate donut" can be many things, I decided to consider them in all their forms: donuts with chocolate-flavored dough, unflavored donuts with chocolate frosting or other chocolate-flavored toppings, and combinations of the two. These donuts are ranked based on taste, texture, and delivery on their chocolate flavor, so let's see which chain delivers in these areas, and which ones don't.

Duck Donuts specializes in made-to-order cake donuts. Staff members fry and top your donut right in front of your eyes, and you can choose your own toppings like it's an ice cream sundae. For this ranking, though, we're sticking to the menu, beginning with the chocolate iced and the chocolate confetti donuts. I've decided to lump these together because they're both typical cake donuts topped with chocolate frosting, with the only difference being the rainbow sprinkles on top of the confetti.

The chocolate part of these donuts is just okay; the frosting is flavorful and balanced, but has a bit of a gritty texture. Once bitten into, the grit melts quickly enough, but it's still a bad start. The bigger problem lies with the donuts themselves, which are simple cake donuts, distinct from the raised donuts offered by other chains. 

On the plus side, they have potential; mine had a nice crumbly texture and a perfect golden brown color. But everything I tried from Duck Donuts just had that greasy, old-oil taste. Some of the chocolate toppings did more work than others when it came to covering that up, but the simplicity of the chocolate iced brought it out in the worst way. The chocolate confetti wasn't any better. The sprinkles had a slightly metallic taste to them that I couldn't identify. Wherever it was coming from, it didn't help these already unappealing donuts.

In my experience, Krispy Kreme is the most consistent of all the donut chains. The donuts are always fried in-house, which means if you time your visit well, your order will be fresh, hot, and melt-in-your-mouth.

Excluding Krispy Kreme's take on a Boston cream and its Oreo-branded options, it has two chocolate offerings: the chocolate frosted and the Hershey's double chocolate. The two brands have collaborated before on seasonal offerings, but the latter is part of Krispy Kreme's permanent menu and consists of a regular glazed donut topped with two kinds of chocolate icing and a dollop of chocolate buttercream in the center.

The donut itself is fine — typical Krispy Kreme fare — but the two icings are a little lacking in the chocolate flavor department. This was a consistent issue with Krispy Kreme's chocolate offerings: I think the glaze on the donut itself drowned out any hope of that rich, slightly bitter chocolate flavor shining through. The chocolate buttercream is even more disappointing; not only does it not taste like chocolate, but it has an unpleasant, almost fruity flavor that totally clashes with everything else this donut has going on. I scraped it off after my first bite.

This chocolate offering from Duck Donuts uses the same chocolate frosting as the ones above, but tops it off with a light drizzle of caramel sauce and a handful of chopped peanuts. This is a well-rounded donut; the saltiness of the caramel balances the sweetness of the chocolate, and the peanuts give it a nice crunch without the strange metallic taste from the sprinkles.

The donut itself is on par with the others I tried from Duck: cakey, golden brown, and crumbly. Unfortunately, it suffers from the same pitfalls as the rest of the menu. The frosting itself is gritty, and the donut is greasy, with a bit of a stale, old oil taste to it. 

Thankfully, the abundance of flavor from the toppings here is enough of a distraction. The grittiness isn't as much of an issue with the chopped peanuts on top, and the saltiness of the caramel brings it all together. Occasionally, though, you get a mouthful of that stale-tasting dough.

The last of the menu items I tried from Duck Donuts was also the most complicated, and moreover, the best chocolate donut it has. This is a regular, unflavored cake donut topped with the same chocolate frosting, a generous helping of Oreo crumbles, and a hot fudge drizzle. As a result, it was inevitably the chocolatiest donut I had at Duck.

By the time I got it home, the hot fudge had sort of melted in and intermingled with the regular chocolate frosting, but the taste was still there; the toppings had a much richer chocolate flavor than usual. The Oreo crumbs, which were spread over the entire surface of the donut, were indistinguishable from the grit in the chocolate frosting. When I tried the donut by itself, it still had that greasy taste to it, but the toppings collectively had more than enough chocolate to drown it out.

Is it just me, or do Dunkin's chocolate donuts not really taste like chocolate? The classic chocolate-glazed uses a cakier dough than the chain's other offerings, which is noticeably different in texture as well as taste: They're stodgier, crumblier, and just pure sweet.

That said, this donut isn't bad by any means. It's not the first I would reach for in an assorted dozen, but it has its charms. The glaze gives it a little bit of an exterior bite, which gives way to the crumblier cake donut inside. And even though it doesn't taste a lick like chocolate, it pairs pretty well with a cup of coffee.

Still, it tends to take on a little bit of a cardboard-like, stale taste and texture at room temperature, which is the donut's natural state. If you can't get it fresh, it's a little better warmed up in the microwave. It's still enjoyable either way, but other chocolate donut offerings — even others offered by Dunkin' — are much more satisfying.

With a cakey chocolate base dipped in chocolate frosting, Dunkin's underrated double chocolate donut deserves more attention than it gets. It marries everything that's good about the chocolate glazed donut with Dunkin's chocolate frosting. That frosting is good on its own, with easily the richest flavor of any chocolate frosting included in this ranking, but it brings out more of the chocolate flavor in the dough itself, which makes this an especially indulgent treat.

While the chocolate icing does lend this donut a little more depth of flavor, especially when compared to the sweet-on-sweet plain sugar coating of the chocolate glazed, it still suffers from some of the same pitfalls. If you don't get a particularly frosting-heavy mouthful, this donut doesn't really taste like anything but sugar and the stale, vaguely coffee-scented air of your local Dunkin'.

Ultimately, this donut is a little too dense for my blood and lends itself much better to a Munchkin-sized bite. If I had my choice, I'd rather skip the cakey chocolate offerings overall in favor of the chocolate-topped.

Of Krispy Kreme's two chocolate offerings, this was the clear winner, mainly because it didn't include the chocolate buttercream on the Hershey's donut. The regular chocolate frosting was fine — just as underwhelming, but it scratched the itch. Unfortunately, because this donut was also glazed, the whole thing really just tasted like sugar; the chocolate didn't stand out to me at all.

Like most donut chains, Krispy Kreme allows you to order the chocolate frosted donut with or without sprinkles. You might as well go with the latter; even if they don't add much in the way of taste, the little textural bite they bring to the donut doesn't go amiss.

Having said that, I wouldn't go to Krispy Kreme for a chocolate donut, unless it brought back the chocolate glazed. The chain does have a couple of options on the menu, and at least one of them is good, but that's mostly because it was a soft, chewy Krispy Kreme at heart. The chocolate frosting adds a little something, and definitely scratches that chocolate donut itch. But at the end of the day, I'd rather have a hot, fresh, plain glazed.

The chocolate frosted donut uses Dunkin's standard chewy donut base, which is then dipped in a generous helping of its tacky chocolate frosting and sprinkled (optionally, but who could refuse) with multicolored sprinkles. To me, this is the pinnacle of Dunkin's menu. There's something nostalgic about their chocolate frosting, which tastes to me like it was spooned out of a tub of Betty Crocker. I mean that positively; it's nostalgic in the best way.

The dough itself is about as good as you can reasonably expect from a chain donut: chewy, yeasty, and much more savory than one might assume. That pairs brilliantly with the frosting. Somehow, this donut tastes even more like chocolate than the double chocolate donut does. Because of that, it goes especially well with a cup of coffee, whether you decide to dunk it or not.

The rainbow (or sometimes Dunkin' logo-colored) sprinkles don't add much in the way of taste, but they do give the chocolate frosted donut a little bit of a textural pop, adding a crunch on top of the soft chew of the dough. It might not be the chocolatiest donut on Dunkin's menu, but it's easily the most balanced, and the one I'd choose every time.

I personally tried each chocolate donut ranked above, and scored them based on my perceptions of their quality. I applied my knowledge as an amateur baker and connoisseur of both donuts and all things chocolate in judging them on taste and texture. Donuts were ranked not only on their taste and texture, but also how well they exemplified what it means to be a chocolate donut: if it was a good donut, but didn't taste very much like chocolate, I placed it lower overall.

In order to be considered a "chocolate donut" for the purposes of this ranking, a donut had to have either a chocolate-flavored dough, chocolate-flavored toppings, or both. I prioritized donuts that had chocolate as their primary flavor, and allowed for other flavors only when they augmented the chocolate: I did not consider Boston cream, chocolate and strawberry, or chocolate and peanut butter donuts, for example. I also prioritized national chains over smaller local chains.

In addition, I tried each donut at two different temperatures: once at room temperature, and once warmed in the microwave in order to approximate how they may have tasted fresh from the fryer. Each donut was warmed on high for eight seconds.