Still like those old-time sufganiyot

Every year the sufganiyot (donuts) are just an excuse: the dough balls deep fried in oil have not been filled with jelly and coated with confectioner's sugar for a while now. Even their size is no longer what it once was. Donuts have turned into a sort of frilly sweet.

They are loaded with designs, filled with pistachio, halva and different types of chocolate and packed in festive boxes that snootily announce that it is a gourmet item and not something to grab on the run with the coffee during a certain sinful week of the year.

Tasters over the last month have demanded en masse: bring back the real donuts. We have danishes all year and if we want a frosty filling, we'll buy pralines! Give us golden brown donuts sprinkled with sugar and filled with jelly and stop with the festive trendy stuff. What will be next year, whole-wheat donuts filled with peanut butter? Little donuts filled with marzipan and black caviar?

This year we surveyed donuts made by veteran purveyors and boutique bakeries.

Bonjour excelled at making large donuts, simple and inexpensive. But this year, they too, as the trend dictates, produced small donuts with vanilla, chocolate, butterscotch and strawberry flavors. The variation is indeed smaller but the one with strawberry is closest to the taste of the original.

Roladin offers new fillings every year. The Brazilian donut with a white chocolate, coconut milk and Kahlua filling topped with Belgian chocolate and coconut tasted good, as was the pistachio donut, the cream filled and chocolate coated donut and the donut filled with patissiere cream and vanilla sticks and chocolate coating. They also make donuts filled with caramel or strawberry cream and offer sugar-free donuts for those who think that's important when it comes to eating a sufganiya.

The Blicker Bakery in Petah Tikva, which opened branches in Tel Aviv, Netanya and Zichron Yaakov, is this year offering six types of sufganiyot with fillings including chocolate creme and Bailey's liquor, chocolate creme and lemon-lime milk, creme vanilla, and white chocolate and caramel. There is also one with a taste that is a combination of crembo (an Israeli cream filled treat) and cappuccino, but if you try hard you can also find the traditional red jelly filled donut.

The Tatti Bakery in Givatayim, which opened a large branch near the Yehud industrial zone, is making four flavors of sufganiyot this year: chocolate, halva, butterscotch and jelly. The donuts are fleshy and tasty, reasonably sized and are somewhat reminiscent of the real thing. They also have baked donuts, not fried at all, with a texture that reminds one of a good Danish, but are still a far cry from the taste of the original sufganiya.

The one who this year led the transformation of the sufganiya into a dessert like any other, but did so very well, is the Belina bakery, which opened this year at the Sea and Sun complex in Tel Aviv and is part of the Sitara restaurant. There they bake little sufganiyot that are tasty and well sized and come in flavors such as banana and white chocolate with coconut topping, donuts filled with M&Ms, flaky chocolate donuts, coconut and caramel donuts, chocolate and rock candy donuts, apple and cinnamon donuts, and wonder of wonders, the classic jelly donut.

The baker, Mickey Shamu, owns three branches in Haifa and a new branch in Tel Aviv. He bakes small donuts filled with lemon cream, ricotta cheese and raisins, poppy and chocolate, apricot jam and anything that brings the donut closer to a cake in every sense. He also makes sugar-free donuts, baked donuts and tasty Moroccan sfinj.

Small donuts can also be ordered from Kanafes, an outlet that specializes in fast food and deliveries of sandwiches and baked goods. Chef Erez Turjeman bakes rows of donuts with espresso filling and chocolate almond coating, cinnamon cream and white chocolate, pistachio cream and vanilla, and no less than a chutney filled donut, strange as that may sound.

The Metuka bakery decided to accept the organic and healthy food challenge and came out with a mini sufganiya made with whole-wheat flour and filled with carob chocolate cream as well as mini sufganiyot filled with jam, butterscotch, plum jam and chocolate. The healthy donut tasted like a whole-wheat roll in every respect. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but a sufganiya it is not.