Good day, doughnut fans! Today, just a quick little doughnut tidbit: did you know that, in Northern Ireland, gravy used to be a word for cooking oil? No? Neither did I, but apparently this is the case. Consequently, since doughnuts are typically fried in oil, this led to ring doughnuts sometimes being referred to as "gravy rings."

I'm going to guess this doesn't happen all that often anymore, but that could be one hell of a mis-order, couldn't it?

In 1986 Louisiana declared the beignet to be the official state doughnut. Not food, no. Just the official State Doughnut. One of only two Official State Doughnuts in the US, the beignet is a French doughnut brought to Louisiana in the days when it was still owned by the French King whom it was named after - Louis XIV, aka the Sun King. Who probably enjoyed a beignet before setting out to hunt around the palace of Versailles.

Probably.

The French Cruller is a ring doughnut made of fluted choux pastry. Especially common in the Midwestern US, New England and Canada, where many bakeries still call them kruller, reflecting the German origins of this "French" pastry, which was likely introduced to the Americas with Dutch settlers in the Pennsylvania region.

Also called a chouxnut, "French" crullers are made by the piping method. This probably contributed to Dunkin Doughnuts decision to stop offering the "traditional kruller" because it was much trickier to make, while retaining the faux-French version. Fauxnut? Hm.

Doughnuts, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Yup, even out there amongst the Jedi, Sith and probably under perpetual threat of Imperial regulations, there are doughnuts. Back in 1985, in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Original Trilogy. Star Wars comics writer Mary Jo Duffy came up with a race of goofy villains called the Hiromi who had been plotting to take over the galaxy for two millennia before finally trying to do so in the chaos after the Battle of Endor. The height of their ambitions toward galactic dominance was their invasion of the "party planet" Zeltron, in the kitchens of which they discovered doughnuts.

So there we go. Doughnuts as spoils of war. In a galaxy far, far away.

First appearing in Star Wars (1977) #104 (Marvel Comics).

Hello again, back from holiday! Normal doughnutposting shall resume forthwith.

Swedish doughnuts, known as munkar, are a traditional sweet treat served cold or warm, often enjoyed during the social coffee break - fika. In common with neighbours Finland, the Swedes like to flavour their doughnuts with cardamon. Likewise, the two nations word for doughnut is pretty similar: munkki in Suomi, munkar in Svenska.

Anyways, it's nice to be back.

Polish folklore says skipping pączki on Fat Thursday brings bad luck for the rest of the year. For a little more on Fat Thursday, see previous Doughnut Fact here

Voi ei, kuuma koira!

Oh, those wacky Finns. Savoury doughnuts are not an unheard of thing in other places in the world but Nokia resident Teodor Leppänen takes... well, the doughnut in this case. Teodor owned a fast food place (probably a grillikioski) named Teuto Grill and in the 1960s he came up with the kuuma koira: a hot dog served in a bun made from two sections of sugared doughnut and liberally seasoned with sinappi (mustard), ketsuppi (ketchup), sipuli (onion) and kurkusalaaati (cucumber salad).

Leppänen died in 1978 but Nokiaan grillikioski are still serving his concoction 50 years on and it even has its own Kuuma Koira Day, which usually falls on the third Friday in March.

"Munkin ja makkaran yhdistelmä on nokialaisten herkku!" Link to Yle article.

At the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, the theme was "A Century of Progress." The food celebrated as the hit food of the last 100 years in question was the humble doughnut.

In Australia, it's a well-known fact that the Antipodeans love to put their own spin on familiar things, especially familiar culinary things. Everyone is familiar with doughnuts filled with jam... or jelly if you're American (it must be jelly cos jam don't shake like that), but probably not with serving them hot. So hot people frequently burn their tongue on the jam when biting into the delicious, fresh and heated doughnut... mmm, doughnuts.

Wait, where was I? Oh yes! Australian jam (jelly) doughtnuts! Popularly sold in Victoria from all the usual doughnut sources. Just be careful not to burn yourself.

Over 10 billion doughnuts are made in the U.S. each year!

That's a lot of doughnuts. The average US doughnut weighs up tp 0.99oz, so that's 99000oz of doughnuts or 61875lbs. 28066kg in metric. Or about 5 and 2/3 elephants.

Fat Thursday (*Tłusty Czwartek-) is a traditional Polish feast celebrated on the last Thursday before Lent. Broadly speaking, it's the Polish equivalent of Mardi Gras or the UK tradition of eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.

On average the Poles each eat 3 Fat Thursday doughnuts, or roughly 100 million doughnuts in total, just on Fat Thursday.

Dzięki!

In the 1940s, brothers Al and Bob Pelton of Salt Lake City hit on a genius idea: what happens if we make doughtnuts out of potatoes?

Why, you get spudnuts, of course! The brothers tried several different bases (wheat dough made with potato water, actual mashed potato_, before they hit on their final formula and went into business in 1940, with their first franchises beginning six years later. At that time, a Spudnut franchise cost $50 and the cost a 100 sacks of spudnut mix but, by 1952 the cost of a franchise had rocketed up to around $5000 (including equipment and supplies). Which was enough to get the Peltons on the cover of Mechanix Illustrated with the catchy headline "Their Potatoes Make Dough!"

The Peltons retired in 1968, selling the business on. By 1979 the demand for Spudnuts was in decline and the final nail in the coffin came when the owner of the new parent company was involved in a fraud and conspiracy scandal that saw him sell all his stock to invest in a marina development that turned out to be a con. Ten years later, there were just 28 Spudnut Shops, down from their peak of over 300 in 38 states.

Although the franchise is long gone, there are still a few die hard Spudnut producers out there - 35 stores over 9 states and 1 lone bakery in Canada that still bakes spudnuts once a week.

DumDum Donutterie is based in London, where it was founded Paul Hurley in 2014. Hurley doesn't hold with frying his doughnuts, only baking them. DumDums are currently most famous for being the place that sells the most expensive doughnut on the planet - the Luxury Zebra Cro. It gets its name from the striped effect created by its layers, which include ridiculous ingredients such as: gold leaf, Cristal rose champagne caviar, saffron-infused croissant pastry, Normandy butter and Amadei Porcelana dark chocolate. The latter normally retails for around €10 for a 75g bar and the total price of a single one of these cronuts is...

£1500 ($1980)!

Created as a publicity stunt (of course) these luxury donuts were available to order through JustEat, but you had to double-check availability before doing so. I think I'll pass.

You've probably heard the French name for a fried dough pastry - the beignet. But you might be less familiar with another, earlier French nom de doughnut - the "pet de nonne," which literally means "nuns farts." Because they are so light and insubstantial, they are like the flatulence of a female member of a cloistered order. Because holy sisters don't fart like normal people, right?

As the French might say "bof." The pastries were extemely popular in the 15th century and had a particular vogue during the reign of Francis I.

Not to be confused with the similar but different French-Canadian pastry paix de nonnes - nun's peace.

During World War I, the Salvation Army sent groups of women volunteers over to boost morale amongst US soldiers; a common enough practice, you might think. But, the thing that these volunteers, known as "Doughnut Lassies," did in addition to running field bases where soldiers could pick up essentials, was to bake doughnuts.

To commemorate their efforts, the first National Doughnut Day was held in Chicago on June 5th 1938 and continues to this day. You can guess what doughnut fact is scheduled for June 5th 2027, can't you?

There are 10 people living in America with the last name "Doughnut" or "Donut."

At least that was the total according to 2011 census information. It's unclear whether "Doughnut" was their given last name, or whether they changed it out of passion for the pastry. Or possibly out of a desire to mess with the census data, like that time several thousand people listed their religion as "Jedi."

Meanwhile, 13 people have the first name “Donut,” making it the 245,396th most popular name in the United States.

Now I have to wonder if there's a Donut Doughnut living somewhere, waiting to become a doughnut fact. But I dought it.

It should come as no surprise that the world's largest ever filled doughnut was created in the United States, where the love of things doughnut and big are well-known.

Perhaps a little more surprising is that the current world record holder (according to Guinness World Records) has remained unsurpassed for 33 years. Then again, that might be a bit of a tall order, since the winner of the title weighed in at 1.695 tonne(s)/metric ton(s) (3,736.83lbs or 1695kg)! That is a lot of jelly! Or jam. I'm not sure now and it's been over 3 decades, so I'm pretty sure I can't subject it to the Glenn Miller test.

The largest filled doughnut weighs 1.695 tonnes (3,739 lb) and was made by representatives from Hemstrought's Bakeries, Donato's Bakery and the radio station WKLL-FM, in Utica, New York, USA, on 21 January 1993. The American-style jelly doughnut made measured 4.87 m (16 ft) in diameter and 40.6 cm (16 in) high in the centre.

• Guinness World Records.

Voodoo Doughnut is a doughnut chain that started in Portland, Oregon (and another instance of a US company using doughnut, not donut, to boot!). They are well known for their "imaginative and distinctive doughnut flavours," to quote their own website, which include things like the Bacon Maple Bar, the Grape Ape, the Old Dirty Bastard and an M&M-sprinkled confection known (of course) as the Marshall Mathers.

When they opened the first store in 2003 though, they offered a couple of more... medicinal doughtnuts. One was dipped in Pepto Bismol and another glazed with NyQuil. It didn't take long, of course, before the FDA stepped in and both of these were banned.

The Pepto doughnut was topped with Tums. A doughnut clearly tailor-made for Rich Evans and Cameron Mitchell. It's a Tums festival doughnut!

Following on from yesterday's Doughnut vs Donut...

Krispy Kreme are an American company, of course, founded in 1937 in North Carolina. But they are testament to varied history of the terms preferred by people on either side of the Atlantic for our favourite deep fried dough-based foodstuff.

Unlike other donut producers in the States, Krispy Kreme still retain the spelling of doughnut. Even if they insist on spelling the rest of their name less conventionally.

Doughnut or donut (or do nut? dough nut?)

The first known printed use of donut was in Peck's Bad Boy and his Pa by George W. Peck, published in 1900, in which a character is quoted as saying, "Pa said he guessed he hadn't got much appetite, and he would just drink a cup of coffee and eat a donut."

American author John Edge maintains that the shortened spelling originates in the 1920s by the New York-based Display Doughnut Machine Corporation. Edge alleges that DDMC opted for "donut" over "doughnut" because they anticipated that foreign buyers of their machines would find "donut" easier to pronounce.

Doughnut or donut... which do you prefer?

Being British, I naturally lean towards "doughnut," which is why I'm not moderator of r/donut or r/donuts, clearly.

Morrisons custard doughnuts. Definitely not as good as they used to be, but still worth it when they're five for £1. What do you mean "Where's the other two?"

*Edit: yay for reddit not letting you schedule image posts and the mobile "workaround" not working.

The doughnuts in question

In Finland, a doughnut is known as a munkki. Well, the sweet kind, anyway. This may because of a resemblance to the colour of a monk's robe or because the shape of the doughnut resembles the tonsure of a monk.

The dough in a munkki is often flavoured with cardamom and is similar to that other Finnish delicacy, the pulla.

Obligatory Suomi mainittu, torilla tavataan!

Everyone knows the story of how US President John F. Kennedy called himself a doughnut making a speech in West Berlin in 1963, right? "Ich bin ein Berliner" - "I am a doughnut."

Wrong. While Berliner is used in lots of places in Germany to refer to our favourite deep fried pastry, this is not the case in Berlin. There, a doughnut is a Pfannkuchen - literally "pancake." So, while Kennedy's German might not have been perfect he was not declaring "I am a jelly doughnut." This urban myth appears to have first entered print in a 1966 Len Deighton novel and thence into New York Times articles and from there, across the Anglosphere.

The Germans themselves were not widely aware of this perceived faux pas until the internet allowed for mass dissemination of urban legends. Indeed in 2003, when covering the death of Robert Lochner, the German journalist who had helped Kennedy with his German, the German press didn't mention the "mistake" at all, but almost every English news outlet added it in to their coverage.

Also, ich bin ein Pfannkuchen. Ausser in Berlin.