Apple Cider Donut appears as a signature dish in 1 United States cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Apple Cider Donut · Burlington
Vermont's defining autumn pastry: a cake-style donut made with fresh-pressed apple cider and warm spices, fried hot and rolled in cinnamon sugar, sold by the dozen at orchards and farmers markets September through November.
Apple cider donuts grew out of New England's apple-orchard tradition in the early 20th century, when farmers reduced cider into a concentrate to fold into yeast-leavened donut dough as a way to use the seasonal glut. Modern Vermont cider donuts shifted to cake-style (chemically leavened) batter in the postwar period for speed; Cold Hollow Cider Mill in Waterbury (founded 1974) helped standardise the cinnamon-sugar coating and the on-site fry. In Burlington proper, the donuts appear at the Burlington Farmers Market through autumn, at Champlain Orchards stands, and at August First Bakery, which runs a Vermont-cider-and-maple version. The donut is integral to leaf-peeping tourism: Bostonians and New Yorkers drive north for them.
Where to eat in Burlington:
- August First Bakery
- Burlington Farmers Market vendors
- Burlington Winter Farmers Market