Thank you to the whole team here at Blogging.LA who helped put together a fabulous Donut Summit, and also to our friends and family who helped out at the event as honorary Donut Marshalls!

Thank you to everyone who came and made the event a HUGE success.  We had about 55 entries in total, from donut shops all around LA county, and we want to thank everyone who came and contributed to the donut feast.  YOU made this event awesome!

Thank you to our celebrity judges, Jenn, of JustJenn Designs; Shelley, the Frygirl; and Billy, the 99 Cent Chef, for sharing your donut expertise!

Thank you to Intelligentsia, our coffee sponsor, for providing delicious iced coffee to temper the sugar shock of SO MANY DONUTS.

And now…the winners!

Golden Donut Awards! Courtesy of Frazgo

Best Raised Donut:  Monterey Donuts (5930 Monterey Rd, Highland Park)

Best Cake Donut:  Philippe’s The Original  (1001 North Alameda Street)

Best Donut Filling:  The Donut Man’s fresh peach-filled donuts (915 E Rt 66 Glendora)

Best Fritter:  Earl’s Donuts (20429 Devonshire St, Chatsworth)

Best Frosting or Glaze:  Monterey Donuts

Best Chocolate Donut:  California Donuts’ Chocolate Chip Bar (3540 W 3rd St)

Most Visually Appealing:  California Donuts

Most Unconventional:  Homemade vegan donuts, baked and brought by Jill Rogers

Roundest Donut: Philippe’s the Original

Worst Overall:  Tang’s Donuts (4341 W Sunset Blvd)

Best Vegan Donut:  The Righetous Fryers

Judges’ Choice Award:  Stan’s Donuts’ peanut butter-filled (10948 Weyburn Ave)

Best Overall Donut – THE 2011 DONUT KING: Babycakes (130 East 6th Street)

It filled me with sugary joy!

Yummiest food group.

I am up late practicing my donut poetry skills, and I hope that you are doing the same, because much glory and honor will be bestowed upon the one who delivers the most wonderful donut haiku and/or limerick at the Donut Summit.

We are super excited for you to join us tomorrow for our donut potluck feast!  Bring your friends, bring your family, and, most importantly, BRING YOUR DONUTS!

Donut o’clock is 2pm.  We’ll be at picnic area 6 in Elysian Park.   See the map below – we’ll be near Grace E. Simons Lodge, at the intersection of Chavez Ravine Rd. and Elysian Park Drive.  Once you’re in the park, look for our donut signs, or follow the signs to Grace E. Simons Lodge, and we should be easy to spot.  There’s a parking lot right next to our picnic area, but be sure to arrive early to make sure you get a spot!

View Donut Summit, 2011! in a larger map

My friends and I did what anyone in LA should do when you have someone visiting, and brought our esteemed guest, Joker Beethoven, to Randy’s Donuts, for the Greatest Photo Opportunity that Has Ever Been Staged:

Joker Beethoven is super excited for the Donut Summit.  He think’s Randy’s apple fritter is totally going to be Donut King.

With the Donut Summit just a week or so away, on July 31, we wanted to address a few oft-asked questions about the ins and outs of the Donutocalypse:

1.  What will happen at the Donut Summit?
It’s going to work a little something like this:

- The festivities kick off at 2pm. So, from about 2-2:30, we’ll have Donut Registration. Just show up with your Donuts, check in with our illustrious bloggers, and we’ll make sure your donut box is clearly labeled with the name of your donut shop.

- Once everyone’s donuts are registered (so, by about 2:30), donut tasting will begin and will last until about 3:30. We’ll have donut tasting stations set up, and we’ll provide you with a ballot for voting on your top donuts. Be prepared for a DONUT FEEDING FRENZY!  Hand sanitizer and napkins will, naturally, be provided to deal with the ensuing stickiness.

- Once all of the ballots are submitted, we’ll tally the votes! While vote tallying is going on, you lucky people get to hang out with Metbloggers, and there will be fun and games!  Rumors have been flying about donut pong, donut bingo, and, after the outstanding success of last year’s donut haiku contest…donut limericks!

- At around 4:30, after tallying your votes and consulting with our expert judges, we’ll crown the Donut King!
(Please note that all times listed above are approximate and subject to change!)

2.  Where is the Donut Summit?
In Elysian Park, in picnic area 6, near the intersection of Elysian Park Drive and Chavez Canyon Road.  We’ll be in the are close to Grace E. Simons lodge, which has free parking available.  Hey, look, a map!

View Donut Summit, 2011! in a larger map

3.  Where should I bring donuts from?

Anywhere! From Winchell’s to Spudnuts to Stan’s to your own kitchen – it’s all fair game. Last year, we put together a short list of local donut shops to give you some ideas, but don’t feel restricted to that list.

4.  How many donuts should I bring?
One dozen per party, please!

5.  What’s going to happen to any leftover donuts?
While we would have liked to donate any leftover donuts to a local food bank or soup kitchen, we haven’t been able to find any local organizations that are willing to deal with perishables (but if any of you, dear readers, do know of a local charity who might be interested, please let us know). So any extra donuts will be sent home with Donut Summit attendees in donut doggie bags, so you’ll have breakfast for the week! And there are lots of tasty things to be done with leftover donuts: you can do donut bread pudding, donut trifle, donut french toast, and I, personally, an an advocate of the refried donut – just throw a stale donut into a non-stick pan and the inside will get soft and the glaze will carmelize and go crispy, and it will become the most delicious thing in the world.

I am practicing my donut-eating skills for the Donut Summit RIGHT NOW with an amazing maple old-fashioned from Randy’s.  What are you doing to get ready for the Donut Summit?

Our expert donut judges are:

Billy Vasquez, The 99 Cent Chef

The 99 Cent Chef’s blog is one you should be following, if you don’t already – it’s a tasty ode to cheap, creative cooking, largely using stuff you can find on the shelves of your local 99 Cent Store.  Our own Frazgo interviewed the Chef a few years back, and you can read his interview here.  Billy has been blogging and posting how-to recipe videos since 2006, when the writer’s strike inspired him to help people eat on the cheap.

And when it comes to donuts, the 99 Cent Chef doesn’t mess around.  He took on the heavy hitters and made his own Krispy Kremes in the video below, which, at current count, has over 160,000 youtube hits:

Jenn of Just Jenn Designs and Just Jenn Recipes

Jenn is a designer (if you don’t love her big bundts greeting card, you probably don’t have a soul) and a food blogger, and certainly knows her way around a donut or two.  From tasty plain baked donuts,  to chocolate sour cream donuts; from mochi donuts, to strawberry milk donuts, Jenn has written some of the most creative donut recipes I’ve seen.  And I am completely in love with her totally cute coffee and donut cupcakes!!

Shelley, the Fry Girl

We loved Fry Girl donuts at last year’s Donut Summit!  Shelley has a portable mini-donut maker, and you can hire her to do donut catering for events and parties.  Her donuts are tiny, homemade, melt-in-your mouth taste explosions (and I do not use the phrase “taste explosion” lightly), and they took home awards last year for Best Yeast-raised donut, Most Visually Appealing, and Most Unconventional donut.   Since Shelley’s donuts were such a big hit, it seemed only natural to have her back this year as an expert donut judge, and we are really glad to have her.

And, of course, we want to thank Intelligentsia for providing us with coffee to help the judges cleanse their palates between bites of donut.

The Donut Summit was inspired by the huge number of tiny, hole-in-the-wall donut purveying establishments all over the city, and the seeming impossibility of sampling donuts from every one.  Unlike the parts of the country dominated by big donut chains like Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme, Southern California seems to have escaped the reaches of the corporate donut chains.  (Sure, we’ve got Winchells and Yum-Yum Donuts, but neither of those seems to have enough of a market share to choke out the little guys.)  So the Donut Summit is a chance to celebrate LA’s unique (and, yes, sometimes a little sketchy, depending on the strip mall) donut culture and small businesses, and to discover some hidden gems!

I’ve blogged about D.K.’s Donuts before – they were by far the most awesome discovery from last year’s Donut Summit for me, so I will warn you in advance that I will be seriously pulling for them to take home the Donut King crown this year.  D.K.’s, which is in Santa Monica at Santa Monica and 16th,  is probably as hole-in-the-wall-y and unassuming-looking as you can get from the outside, and the interior has also seen better days.  But, seriously, you will not taste better donuts.  Someone in the kitchen there is a donut artiste par excellence, and has created all kinds of varieties of fresh whipped cream-filled donuts, amazing blueberry fritters, maple bacon donuts, and the charmingly odd cream pup that I blogged about here last summer.  Glendora’s Donut Man may have taken home the crown last year with their divine fresh strawberry donuts, but this year I am putting my money on D.K.’s turning into the Little Donut Shop that Could, and taking home that crown.

So, that’s where I’d put my money, but I want to know who else might be a contender!  Comment below and let us know who your pick is for Donut King!

Donut photo courtesy of Sidereal on Flickr.

Los Angeles restaurants are extremely well-represented – below are some of the images and recipes from the book of L.A. restaurants of the past. Most of these are now long gone, but we can now re-create them in the comfort of our own kitchens, thanks to the magic of used bookstores and the internet!

Some Fringe Freaks, the mascots of the Hollywood Fringe!

Fringe Festivals are, by definition, open and unjudicated, which means anyone with a show can potentially get in and stage their show.  On hand, this is part of the reason why the Fringe can be so exciting and cool; on the other hand, it means that sometimes the shows are a bit hit and miss, and it can be hard to tell from the program what’s worth checking out or not.  So, if you’ve been out to the festival, please let us know in the comments if you’ve seen shows that you recommend!  The performers, who have to absorb a lot of the costs of staging their shows, always appreciate a shout-out.

For info about tickets, shows, venues, and schedules, visit hollywoodfringe.org!

We’re also changing locations this year – so come join us on July 31, at 2pm in Elysian Park.  We’ll be in picnic area 6, which you can find on this park map.

More details to follow!  Mark your calendars for the Donutocalypse on the 31st!

If you’ve never been to a drive-in theatre (and I’m always surprised at how many people haven’t!) you should go.  There are a few good drive-ins around LA to choose from.  Last week, I caught Pirates 4 at the Mission Tiki Drive-In near Pomona, which has a fabulously decked-out retro tiki snack bar.  There’s also the Vineland Drive-In in City of Industry.  Devil’s Night Drive In takes place once a month in Downtown LA, on the 2^nd floor roof parking lot at 240 W. 4^th Street, and they have carhops to serve you food!

Sadly, most of the other drive-ins in LA county are shuttered (the LA county page on Roadsidepeek.com is almost like a tragic graveyard of abandoned drive in sites) but there are a few left somewhat further afield – Riverside has both the Rubidoux and the Van Buren.  And the Southern California Drive-In Movie Society is doing what they can to keep people interested and drive-ins open.

Photo by Kenneth Adam.