Many of the best doughnuts in Sydney are found in the western suburbs.

This is where self-taught bakers, confined to their homes during a series of particularly long and tedious pandemic lockdowns, indulged in the unique comfort of creating soft, freshly fried doughnuts. And it is where those doughnuts caught the attention of tens of thousands of social media users, kicking off a craze for the sugar glazed that continues to grow today.

In March, stay-at-home mother-of-two Marwa Yassine opened Boston Doughnuts in a small shop sandwiched between a car wash and a petrol station on the Hume Highway in Bass Hill. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it location, but on opening day more than 1500 people showed up.

“It was chaotic … like something out of a movie,” Yassine says.

“I posted about it on Instagram and it blew up from there.”

In September, Yassine posted an Instagram story highlighting a weekly special (maybe it was the video of caramel sauce oozing over a sticky date pudding doughnut, or the pavlova doughnuts topped with fresh whipped cream and dragonfruit), and a man from south-east Queensland drove 12 hours to try it.

“He told me he just couldn’t handle it anymore and jumped in the car to drive straight here,” Yassine says.

“He loved them, he said he would do it again.”

Yassine, a first generation Lebanese Australian who grew up cooking alongside her mother, was working at Woolworths when she impulsively purchased a small deep fryer from Harvey Norman. She taught herself how to make the doughnuts by watching YouTube.

“I just kept making them until I perfected it,” she says.

But it wasn’t until the COVID-19 lockdown that Yassine began making them in earnest, and the positive feedback from family and friends encouraged her to open a shop with business partner and husband Ahmed Taha. Now, with plans to open a larger concept store in the nearby Bass Hill Plaza, Yassine is confident Boston Doughnuts sells “Australia’s biggest, softest and freshest doughnuts”.

“I knew I was going to send Sydney into a new level of doughnut craze,” she says.

A dream of knafah (Lebanese custard) doughnuts inspired TikTok comedian Frida Deguise to start making them at home in 2016. The former fine dining chef, who says she’d never before made a doughnut, spent days trying to recreate the dream dessert.

“It didn’t really work out, so I went to America to learn [under a famed doughnut manufacturer],” Deguise says.

“I was the last person he ever taught. Afterwards, he told me I was going to be one very rich lady, and walked off into the sunset.”

Deguise went from making 70 doughnuts each day in her home kitchen, to opening L.A. Donuts in a shopping strip in Sydney’s Beverly Hills in 2017. She says business really took off during lockdown, when her comedic talent and American-style doughnuts captured the attention of more than 45,000 TikTok followers.

“It was so important. I had to become stronger on socials because people couldn’t come out to see me,” she says.

“The business built up quickly and I struggled to keep up, it was really crazy.”

Further west, in a neon-lit shop across the road from the Marayong train station, Patricia Abel is preparing to launch a Sydney-wide delivery service. Her Filipino bakery, Mrs Ube, has been growing in popularity since 2020.

The former food inspector taught herself how to bake using cookbooks bought on trips to the Philippines, and then created ube and pandan fillings using her grandmother’s recipes. When Sydney locked down, Abel used social media to sell her wares online.

“It was growing so quickly I had to move it out of the house, it allowed me to quit my job and just go with it,” she says.

On Fridays and Saturdays, Mrs Ube sells colourful yeast-raised doughnuts filled with pandan kaya (coconut jam), ube (purple yam in a custard which takes the team more than three hours to make), and polvoron (malted custard).

“I opened near Blacktown because there’s such a strong Filipino community here, but over the past six months there’s been a lot more people wanting to buy our products,” Abel says.

“That’s why we’ve had to start delivering. It’s such a trend right now.”

Where to find Sydney’s best doughnuts

Boston Doughnuts, Bass Hill

You’ll find some of the city’s biggest, fluffiest doughnuts hidden between a car wash and a petrol station on the busy Hume Highway. There’s a huge range of flavoured yeast-based doughnuts, including unusual options such as pineapple cream, peanut butter and jelly, and iced vovo. But the original glazed is unmissable: a soft, super-sized, super-fresh staple that puts the bigger chains to shame.

924 Hume Highway, Bass Hill; bostondoughnuts.com.au

Comeco, Newtown

Regardless of your dietary restrictions (or lack thereof), the gluten-free, nut-free and plant-based doughnuts at Comeco are immensely enjoyable. There are two options: the chewier sourdoughnut using 48-hour fermented sourdough made from brown rice; and the lighter, fluffier version with added sweet potato. Each doughnut is freshly fried to order, arriving golden and warm, overflowing with your choice of Japanese-inspired fillings such as yuzu custard or kinako (roasted soy bean) and sugar.

524A King Street, Newtown; comecofoods.com.au

Demochi Donuts, Burwood

Mochi doughnuts combine the soft, chewy interior of Japanese mochi (pounded rice cake) with the crisp golden shell and sugary glazes of American doughnuts. They’re typically shaped into a ring of eight connected balls, which makes for an especially satisfying, pull-apart eating experience. Find them (made fresh, frequently throughout the day) at Demochi, a small, neon-lit stand in Burwood Chinatown. Flavours include matcha, Vietnamese coffee and our pick: honey glaze.

3/38-40 Railway Parade, Burwood; demochi.com.au

Donut Papi, Marrickville

Creativity is at the forefront of this doughnut shop, where rotating monthly specials feature the brilliant and bizarre. A collaboration with nearby Vietnamese restaurant Hello Auntie resulted in a lobster long john (cooked lobster on a beetroot-powder dusted eclair); and a mie goreng doughnut was a sell-out at the Night Noodle Markets. Donut Papi’s regular menu features nostalgic favourites (cinnamon, Boston cream) alongside flavours from owner Ken Rodrigueza’s Filipino background (ube, milk tea).

139 Marrickville Road, Marrickville; donutpapi.com

Duo Duo, Strathfield

The creme brulee doughnuts at Duo Duo are what desserts dreams are made of: pillowy, piped with creamy custard, and encased in a crackling, sugary shell. The strawberries and cream variant has fresh, sugared strawberries gently spooned on top to order. If you’re feeling particularly indulgent, pair them with a scoop of house-made gelato (flavours include earl grey and lychee, apple pie and Vietnamese iced coffee).

11 The Boulevarde, Strathfield; duoduo.com.au

Grumpy Donuts, Camperdown and St Peters

Blink and you’ll miss the new Grumpy Donuts outpost, a sparsely decorated takeaway cafe hidden beneath the shade sails of a Princes Highway car wash. It’s here you’ll find Scott Clark and Elise Honeybrook’s fluffy, American-style doughnuts. They’re not-too-sweet and not-too-greasy, with fist-sized blueberry fritters, flaky cinnamon twists and classic rings dripping with maple glaze. Check out their socials for weekly specials such as mango passionfruit mousse and remember, almost every flavour is available vegan, too.

379B Princes Highway, St Peters; 72 Pyrmont Bridge Road, Camperdown; grumpydonuts.com

L.A. Donuts, Beverly Hills

TikTok comedian and former chef Frida Deguise makes doughnuts that are unashamedly American: big in size and bold in flavour, using techniques from an intensive three-day cooking course in Los Angeles. Each doughnut is a decadent miniature dessert, lavishly decorated and generously filled. Standout flavours include pavlova smash, fairy bread and knafah (Lebanese custard).

Shop 2, 328 King Georges Road, Beverly Hills; ladonuts.com

Mrs Ube, Marayong

You’ll find this little suburban bakery beside the Marayong train station, where (on Friday and Saturday) they make some of Sydney’s most delicious doughnuts. The focus is on fresh dough and Filipino flavours. There’s the ube leche flan doughnut, with a purple puck of trembling flan in the middle; the calamansi (a lemon-lime hybrid fruit) doughnut, topped with a swirl of torched meringue; and the pandan kaya (coconut jam) doughnut, with house-made jam using fresh pandan leaves. Delivery available Sydney-wide.

1/44 Railway Road, Marayong; mrsube.com.au

Shortstop Coffee & Donuts, Barangaroo and Haymarket

Doughnuts go gourmet at Shortstop, where yeast-raised, cake and choux-based creations come in flavours such as Australian honey and sea salt, earl grey and rose, and maple walnut and brown butter. Owners Anthony Ivey and Sinye Ooi strictly adhere to seasonality when creating each flavour, and try to limit the amount of sugar added “so they can be enjoyed daily”. No complaints here.

Shop 3/23 Barangaroo Ave, Barangaroo and 15 Little Hay Street, Haymarket; short-stop.com.au

Tuga Pastries, Clovelly and Alexandria

The buttery brioche doughnuts at Tuga are soft and delicate, coated with cinnamon sugar or a powdery veil of icing sugar, and oozing with house-made raspberry jam, vanilla cream or the perennially popular Nutella. At the weekend, flavours are dialled up to 11 with seasonal specials such as strawberries and cream (an extravaganza of pink, featuring fresh strawberry diplomat cream, compote and icing). Bonus: they also make great coffee.

Shop 6, 231 Clovelly Road, Clovelly; 10/112 McEvoy Street, Alexandria; tugapastries.com.au