October apple cider donut from the Apple Hill farms on the Camino-Placerville road, 45 minutes east of Sacramento. Sold warm at the farm stand.
Apple Hill on the Camino-Placerville road in El Dorado County took shape in the 1960s when an apple-grower cooperative banded together to keep family farms in the Sierra foothills viable. The cider-donut tradition came from the Northeast US apple-cider mills and travelled west with the apple farmers; by the 1980s every Apple Hill farm had a donut stand and a press. The October season runs four weekends with traffic backed up on US-50 east from Sacramento, and the donut, fried in apple cider with cinnamon-sugar dredge, is the photograph everyone takes across the long-running grower anchors of the cooperative.
2 editor picks for Apple Hill Apple Cider Donut in Sacramento, ranked by editorial score. All Sacramento signature dishes · Apple Hill Apple Cider Donut across every city.
Freeport Bakery ★ 4.7
land-park · 2966 Freeport Boulevard, Sacramento, CA 95818
Freeport Bakery on Freeport Boulevard in Land Park, Sacramento, runs a long-standing California cake counter with Lemon Zinger cakes that travel by post.
Pushkin's Bakery ★ 4.6
midtown · 1820 29th Street, Sacramento, CA 95816
Danny and Olga Turner's Pushkin's Bakery on 29th Street, midtown Sacramento, opened 2013 as the city's defining gluten-free and dairy-free bakery counter.