By DANA ZAXMambo(photo credit: AGAMEDIA)
After a long holiday-free period of time since the deliciousness of Tishri holiday meals, it's time for the Festival of Lights, or festival of yum, if you want to be more accurate. Eight days of lighting candles, remembering the holy temple, singing along, spinning dreidels and all that, but really, we're here for the food. So, we decided to sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of our beloved readers, taste what the market of oil has to offer for our favorite holiday, and give you a heads-up on the best Hanukka doughnuts.
Back to childhood
When I was a kid, I remember going with my mom to Bonjour, asking for a doughnut with nothing on it but sugar powder. I don't know what I was thinking because obviously, the best part of a doughnut is the strawberry jelly inside, but I do remember it was heaven. Bonjour's doughnuts are still fresh, soft, airy and tasty, they taste like real old-fashioned Hanukka doughnuts should taste like.
You lucky northerns
Mamboo is a patisserie and kitchen in Yokneam, you most definitely would like to pay a visit to. Their doughnuts are out-of-this-world amazing, full-sized with beautiful, unique and generous fillings and toppings, we just couldn't have enough. Our favorites? Bianco and Flan flavors, sounds special, right? Just wait until you try one!
How sophisticated
Oren Becker's doughnuts look like the ones you would make at home (if you had any talent in the kitchen). They're small and not even-sized, in a way that makes you feel like someone hand-made them with lots of love. The original flavors are all great, but we especially loved the Baladi figs, which is a fantastic twist to the famous jelly doughnut. Another cool twist was the vegan one, the no eggs, strawberry jelly filling doughnut is a great choice whether you're vegan or not.
And a cup of coffee on the side
Sitting at Café Greg for an afternoon cup of coffee? You'd be happy to know that you can get great doughnuts instead of your regular cookie or croissant. The famous café chain offers a great choice of citrus scented doughnuts, filled with chocolate, jelly, or lotus spread. We will definitely miss this one when the holiday is over.
Oh, Roladin Roladin, what can we say about you? Everyone waits for Hanukka all year long just for a glimpse (and maybe a taste) of your wonderful bite doughnuts, we might as well call it the holiday of Roladin. When we got the package of this gorgeous collection we couldn't help ourselves, took tons of pictures and instagrammed them immediately. I bet you'd do the same. We especially liked the Banana-cotta and Crème brûlée ones. The small size gives you a chance to try more than one, or eat a guilt-free doughnut, and that is a game-changer.
The cool alternative
Iceberg took our love for Hanukka and French-kissed it, making a gluten-free, oil-free doughnut out of macarons. Yes, it's not your usual fried dough, but it is Hanukka flavored paradise. Two large macaron cookies filled with vanilla ice-cream or strawberry sorbet, both topped with fresh home-made strawberry jelly. This cold yummy and refreshing alternative to the holiday's oily sweets is a must-try.
Our top choice
Shemo's doughnuts are pure perfection. Besides being amazingly beautiful, to the point it was hard to ruin them by taking a bite (but no worries, we quickly got over that), the taste was just incredible. They were all delicious, but everyone's top choice was the Mille-feuille, which was plain wow. Shemo also makes a baked sugar covered jelly doughnut, which tastes divine, sparing you the oily after-taste and after-guilt doughnuts usually come with.
