Spring 2026 Seasonal Specials

Bright, floral, and utterly spring. A tender cake donut with a lemon curd center, topped with a lavender-infused glaze and dried edible flowers. The lemon comes from a local organic farm that grows Meyer lemons in greenhouses — they're sweeter and less acidic than standard lemons, which lets us use less sugar in the curd while keeping it rich and punchy.

The lavender glaze was the hardest part to develop. Lavender in food is a tightrope walk — too much and it tastes like soap or perfume, too little and you can't detect it at all. We steep food-grade Provence lavender buds in warm milk for exactly 12 minutes, then strain and mix the infused milk into our standard glaze base. The result is a subtle, floral sweetness that you notice on the finish of each bite, never on the front.

The dried edible flowers on top — a mix of cornflowers, marigold petals, and tiny lavender buds — are purely decorative, but they make this donut genuinely beautiful. Several customers have told us they almost didn't want to eat it. (They ate it anyway.) This is our most Instagrammed seasonal donut by a wide margin, and we're okay with that.

Pairs with: A London Fog latte (Earl Grey tea latte with vanilla and steamed milk). The bergamot in the tea echoes the floral notes in the lavender, and the vanilla rounds out the lemon. It's a stunning combination.

Can be made vegan: Yes — we swap the butter in the curd for coconut oil and use oat milk in the glaze. The texture changes slightly (the curd is a touch less silky), but the flavor is nearly identical. Just ask when you order.

Back by overwhelming popular demand. The Honey Cardamom first appeared in our spring 2024 lineup, and when we retired it at the end of May that year, we received more customer requests to bring it back than for any other seasonal flavor in our history. One customer emailed us weekly for three months. (Hi, David. This one's for you.)

This is a yeast donut — our lightest, fluffiest base — brushed generously with wildflower honey and dusted with freshly ground green cardamom. The honey comes from an apiary about 40 kilometers outside Sweet City that produces small-batch wildflower honey with notes of clover and wild thyme. It's not as aggressively sweet as commercial honey, which lets the cardamom come through clearly.

Speaking of the cardamom: we grind it fresh each morning from whole pods. Pre-ground cardamom loses its aromatic oils within weeks of grinding, and the difference in flavor is enormous. Freshly cracked cardamom has this warm, almost citrusy quality — like a cross between ginger and eucalyptus — that pre-ground simply can't match. We dust it on while the honey is still sticky, so the spice bonds to the surface and creates a fragrant, slightly gritty texture that adds complexity to every bite.

The warmth of the cardamom wakes up your palate, while the honey gives a soft, lingering sweetness that stays with you long after you've finished eating. Several of our team members have described it as "a hug in donut form," which is about as high a compliment as food can get. It scored 4.8 in our internal tasting — the highest of any seasonal flavor we've ever created.

Pairs with: A chai latte. The cardamom in the donut harmonizes with the chai spices, and the steamed milk softens the honey's sweetness. If you want to go black, a strong Assam tea works beautifully too.

Chef Maria's personal creation, and the flavor she's most proud of in this lineup. The inspiration came from a trip to Istanbul, where she spent a week eating her way through the city's pastry shops and baklava stalls. "The combination of pistachio and rose water is everywhere in Turkish and Middle Eastern sweets," she said, "and it works so incredibly well. I wanted to bring that flavor profile into the donut format."

The donut itself is a delicate cake-style base — slightly denser than our yeast donuts, which gives it the structural integrity to hold the filling. Inside: a pistachio cream made from roasted Sicilian Bronte pistachios, blended with butter, powdered sugar, and a touch of almond extract. Bronte pistachios are the gold standard — they're smaller and more intensely flavored than the Californian or Iranian varieties, with a vivid green color that's completely natural.

The glaze is where the rose water comes in. We mix a tiny amount of food-grade rose water (just two teaspoons per batch) into a standard sugar glaze, and the result is ethereal — barely-there floral notes that you notice more as a perfume than a taste. It's the kind of flavor that makes you pause mid-bite and think "what is that?" If the rose water were any stronger, it would overpower the pistachio. At this level, they dance together perfectly.

The finishing touch is a generous scattering of crushed pistachios on top. We chop them by hand to get an uneven texture — some pieces are chunky for crunch, others are almost powdered for visual color. The green against the pale pink glaze makes this one of the most visually striking donuts we've ever produced.

This donut represents something new for Donutas — a flavor profile that's more global, more refined, and more adventurous than our usual lineup. We were nervous about how it would be received, but the early response has been overwhelmingly positive. If it does well through the spring, we're considering adding a permanent pistachio donut to the menu (though possibly with a different flavor pairing).

Pairs with: Turkish coffee, if you want to go all-in on the Middle Eastern theme. Otherwise, a simple espresso macchiato — the bitterness of the coffee against the sweet nuttiness of the pistachio is incredible.