We visited Happy Donuts as part of The Great Jelly Donut Hunt in February 2024. I’ll leave some photos and my review. My review is based on the following scale:
We went on a late-start Monday (school starts an hour later on Mondays, so we wake up at the normal time to head out for donuts on the first late-start Monday of the month). So it was dark out.
My wife and four of my six kids wanted to come. We went armed with our review booklets.
Between the six of us, we got 3 jelly donuts, a pink sprinkles donut (for my youngest), and my wife got an old-fashioned. We also got an apple fritter that we would share — just to try it. I’m only rating the jelly donut.
The Jelly Donut Review
Happy Donut’s Jelly Donut
TOTAL SCORE
Based on the above, the jelly donut from Happy Donut scores a rating of “Average” or slightly above average.
Detailed Review
Ambiance/Vibe & Cleanliness
The ambiance of the store is very nice. It’s a happy donut place — just as its name would suggest. The only reason I’m not giving it a 5-star on cleanliness is because there were a bunch of crumbs on the ground by our table. In fairness, they had been open for a couple of hours by the time we came over, and it was getting quite a bit of traffic, so I would not blame them for having some crumbs.
Presentation
The shape and presentation of the donut is very pleasing. The only thing that brings it down a star is that on some of the jelly donuts you could see a distinct shadow on the top of the donut where the jelly was. This means that the jelly is too close to the surface of the dough — making a poor jelly-to-dough ratio. That being said, my particular donut did not have that.
But one of our donuts in the batch had it a little bit. I circled the donut where you can see the jelly pushing to the surface of the donut. It is not very pronounced in this one either, really, but it is noticeable. It’s one of the first things I noticed about the jelly donuts. So it brings down the aesthetics for me.
The glaze
The glaze was fine and smooth, but perhaps a little thin, if I’m being picky — which I am.
The Dough
The dough was very soft and moist — too soft. It was moist to the point where I felt like I could taste or feel the oil. It tasted like clean oil, but I felt like if I were to squeeze the donut, clean cooking oil would drip out.
The Jelly
The jelly had a nice tartness to it. It tasted quite good, but it also strangely stuck to my teeth.
Jelly to Dough Ratio
As for the jelly-to-dough ratio, it was not a good mix. I had two bites with no jelly. Until the last bite, there was only a bit of jelly. However, the last bite was jammed full of jelly. The donut just did not get a good, even spread of the jelly throughout the donut. As a result, the sticky jelly was overwhelming for one bite and then inadequate for the remainder.
When I first tried the donut, the jelly-to-dough ratio was the most disappointing part. However, the feeling of lingering oil moisture stayed with me longer, so overall I would say that stood out as the most disappointing feature of this donut.
The value
The donut was $1.69, which seems like a typical price. I’m giving it 3 stars for average value.
Conclusion on Happy Donut’s Jelly Donut
My conclusion is that Happy Donuts is a nice, fun shop with an average jelly donut. My experience at Happy Donuts is making me consider whether I should have a separate rating for appearance-related factors and the actual donut. In this case, Happy Donuts would get 4.5 stars for appearance and 2.7 stars for the jelly donut, which lands it in the disappointing region. This breakdown makes a lot of sense for this particular excursion.
I would be interested in going to Happy Donuts again to try different donuts. While I did have a bite of the apple fritter, I didn’t think about it enough to give it a proper rating. I thought that bite was good though.
