I had to pick some items up at my local Winco and decided to give their jelly donuts a try as part of The Great Jelly Donut Hunt. There’s really not much more to the story so I will jump right into the review.
Here is the scale:
The Jelly Donut Review
Winco’s Jelly Donut
TOTAL SCORE
At $0.78, the Winco donut is the least expensive donut I’ve come across so far. But the fact that it is so cheap doesn’t save it from earning a rating of halfway between “disappointing” and “okay.”
Detailed Review
Ambiance/Vibe & Cleanliness
The last grocery store donut I reviewed was from Walmart. One thing I will say for Walmart is that they try to make their bakery area look like a nice, quaint bakery. It has shelving and displays that at least make it obvious that they are trying to give the area a nice bakery vibe.
Winco does not go that far. Their donuts are in an acrylic donut display that looks like it has been in a war zone.
Granted, I’ve never been in a war zone, and part of me doubts that a war zone will even have a display of freshly made donuts, but I think you get my point: The area is kind of a mess.
Winco’s donut display does not create an appealing ambiance.
Presentation
Like the Walmart donut, the glaze of the Winco donut had a plastic look to it. Also like the Walmart donut, despite the plasticky look, the glaze is still moist underneath. In this picture, if you look closely, you can see the moist underside of the glaze (at a part of the glaze I crunched down while handling).
But unlike the Walmart donut, the glaze in the Winco donut did not get completely covered. It has many blotchy spots around the edges that did not get glazed. It looks like maybe they used a ladle to spoon the glaze over the top of the donuts and the edges just didn’t get covered.
Maybe this is intentional, though. I don’t know. I would just expect the glaze to cover the entire donut. That did not happen for this donut.
The glaze
As mentioned, the appearance of the glaze was not that great. However, it tasted good. I have no complaints about the taste of the glaze.
The Dough
My first bite was just dough, which I like because I like to try the donut before the jelly. The dough felt thick but soft. It had a very pleasant taste. My only problem with the dough (and you can see this in the image below) is that it tended to stay compressed with bitten. This means you are kind of flattening the donut as you eat it. So although the first bite was very soft and fluffy, the next bites were on compacted dough. So the first bite was markedly more pleasing than the remaining ones.
But again I want to emphasize that the dough itself is tasty. If it could keep some of its shape and otherwise stay the same, I would give the dough five stars. Since it does not do that, I’m giving it four stars.
The Jelly
When I first bit into the jelly, the first thing I observed was the texture. I thought it had a nice, smooth consistency. It wasn’t too thick or too runny. I also at very first thought the flavor was good. It reminded me ever so slightly of cherry soda, which I didn’t mind. I found it kind of unique.
But then the flavor kind of turned more reminiscent of cherry cough syrup. It was like a mix of cherry soda with a hint of cough syrup.
This was not good. And, unfortunately, the cough syrup flavor lingered in the aftertaste of the donut. It wasn’t very good.
For this reason, I gave it a half-star. It’s a bad jelly.
Jelly-to-Dough Ratio
The jelly-to-dough distribution was also not good. You could see the hold in the donut where they piped in the jelly. You would think that if the jelly were to accumulate someone, it would be near the piping hole.
If you thought that for this donut, you would be wrong.
The jelly was only in about 1/4 of the donut (instead of being evenly spread throughout) but on the side of the donut opposite the piping hole.
I take it to mean that whoever is filling these donuts put the tube too far in.
As a result, most bites of the donuts did not have enough jelly and the final bite was too much. This may be why I had the lingering aftertaste of the cough-syrupy jelly in my mouth for so long.
The jelly-to-dough ratio gets one star.
The value
When I decided to get the donut, I didn’t even look at the price. I guess I just assumed I could afford it. And it was a great guess because the Winco donuts are the cheapest donuts I’ve seen. Per my receipt, it was only $0.78!
That’s a really good price for a donut. Yet, I would still say that is only an “okay” value for this particular donut — just because the jelly sucks.
I would be very interested to try another Winco donut sans the jelly. A Winco donut without jelly would be a steal. The dough is very good, especially for such a low price. For instance, I could see the maple bar scoring very high on a donut rating scale. It makes me think I should be trying other donuts instead of just the jelly donut.
Conclusion on Winco’s Jelly Donut
My conclusion is that Winco’s jelly donuts are not good. They are right in between disappointing at okay. While they are cheap, the low price just does not make up for a terrible jelly.
My hypothesis, though, is that the other donuts would be a great purchase at $0.78 a donut. I may just do that, but skip the jelly donut.
