As you no doubt know, today is National Doughnut Day. We've been looking forward to this ever since we got a press release from Dunkin' Donuts five minutes ago! Apparently, it's a real thing? Observed on the first Friday in June, it was originally celebrated by the Chicago Salvation Army in 1938 to honor women who served donuts to soldiers in WWI.
Today participating Dunkin' Donuts locations will be giving out one free doughnut with the purchase of any beverage (limit one per customer). We spent some time calling around to various locations, and the only one that picked up was the Dunkin' at First Ave and Stuy Town, where they'll be running the deal until midnight. Out of curiosity we called around to other doughnut purveyors; the owner of the ever-seductive Peter Pan Donuts told us she didn't know it was National Doughnut Day, and promptly apologized. At the Donut Plant, we asked the manager how they were observing the holiday, and he declared, "We're celebrating National Doughnut Day by selling as many doughnuts as possible!"
And Dunkin' Donuts just announced the winner of its second annual "Create Dunkin's Next Donut" contest. From nearly 90,000 donut creations submitted online, a dozen finalists traveled to Dunkin' Donuts University (yes, also a real thing!) in Massachusetts to compete in a bake-off competition.
The winner is the "Monkey-see Monkey-donut," a bananas foster-filled donut with chocolate icing, topped with Reese’s® Peanut Butter shavings, created by Rachel Davis, right, of Sharon, Massachusetts. Davis gets a $12,000 grand prize and will see her winning doughnut sold in participating Dunkin' Donuts "restaurants" nationwide. It sounds appetizing, but we're still dying to try Dunkin's Wasabi Cheese and Seaweed Cheese doughnut (a real thing as well!).
