The Best of Philadelphia Donuts

Our search for the best donut in Philadelphia started at Reading Terminal on Saturday morning.  We met some friends there who drove up from Delaware and I don't believe they were really prepared for the love we feel for donuts (I'll exclude Debbie from the we as she more likes donuts).

We went the long way through the market to look around at all of the stalls and finally found the boys in front of Beiler's Bakery.

This was only a small segment of the selection. We had a hard time choosing the flavors but stuck with the glazed, pumpkin cake, pumpkin glazed, chocolate, apple, etc.  The ones you expect us to get if you followed us through our Kentucky adventure.

I promised lots of photos of Jenica being happy with food.

Cutting up the donuts into equal parts is a serious business.

The glazed won our vote for best of though Emily loved the Boston Creme.

Our next stop wasn't until the next morning when we visited the reason I planned the trip - Federal Donuts.  This place exceeded all of our expectations.

There are two kinds of donuts here - fancy and hot fresh.  We bought one of each.

From my favorite to least favorite in the fancy category - blackberry anise (top middle), sticky bun (bottom middle), pumpkin spice latte (top right), mango coconut (top left), sea salt and chocolate (bottom right) and cookies n'cream (bottom left).

But the hot fresh donuts were the absolute best.  With each bite of our vanilla spice, strawberry lavender and cinnamon brown sugar, we only wanted more of these.

We made one last stop on our way out of town at Frangelli's. We were so full from brunch that we didn't even open these until our ride home after visiting Longwood Garden hours later.  I can say with confidence that Federal won this contest but the cronut from here was pretty good.  I'm so excited after eating this one to try the real thing in NYC this weekend.