Off to a Bad Start
Your first experience with McDonald's Donut Sticks will be a feeling of getting cheated. To be precise, you'll think they forgot to fill your order, instead handing you an empty bag. Should you resist the urge to complain to the cashier and peek inside the bag, you'll see that the donut sticks are indeed there, but you'll still feel ripped off. They're so light, so insubstantial. How can they possibly provide value?
Tasting Is Equivocating
Once you take a bite of your first donut stick, your mood will start to change, almost as if impelled by nature; you can't bite down on fluffy, salty, starch, fried in fat, and coated in sugar and cinnamon without an autonomic pleasure response. Still, your neocortex might still assert itself and ask "but are these really donuts?" If your Platonic conception of donuts begins with the template of the basic cake donut, hefty, sodden, and sweet fried batter that sits like a satisfying glutenous lump in your stomach and easily serves as a proxy for a filling breakfast, then the answer is surely no, these are not real donuts. If, on the other hand, your idea of a donut is more like the classic Krispy Kreme donut -- a light, insubstantial sweet nothing that dissolves in your mouth and vanishes, like the last five minutes of dreaming before the alarm wakes you -- then these donut sticks dwell in the general vicinity of the donut.
The Veil of Mystery Is Lifted
And yet...something still seems off. You've tasted something like this before, but it wasn't called a donut, it was something else. These sticks are so light and airy, with gigantic voids, bubbles, and pockets rendering them nearly hollow, a tender, sugar-dusted, chewy shell encasing sweet warm vapor. They collapse with each bite, deflating to something scarcely thicker than a tortilla. What do these remind us of? Churros? In flavor, certainly, but they seem more like dinner rolls or buns than churros, which again are not far from cake donuts, do. And then it hits you: these are sticks of fry-bread, that Navajo invention created out of necessity from government flour, sugar, salt, and lard that's since become a staple of state fairs as much as of Native American culture. Puffed up, bready, lighly coated in oil and enlivened with sugar and sometimes other spices. Once you accept that this is what McDonald's has decided to serve you, labels be damned, all your quibbles will disappear and you can enjoy them like the magically addictive treats that they are.
Eating Strategies
McDonald's Donut Sticks come in two order sizes, the 6-piece and the 12-piece. Because they're so light, it's quite easy to consume 12, but because they're so rich you may regret it afterwards; you'll start to feel sick before you start to feel full. I recommend starting with six and seeing if you can be content with that. They even offer a combo of six sticks and a small coffee for $3 and change, a prudent nudge I would say.
The other thing every eater must decide for themselves is what to do with the leftover cinnamon sugar that remains in the bottom of the bag or, if you dump them out onto your tray, then on your paper tray cover or napkin. You can try to incorporate some of it back into the donut stick itself by dipping the exposed bitten end into the layer of sugar after each bite uncovers a new bit of donut cross-section, but that is unlikely to use it all up. At that point, you're either the kind of person who will lick your fingertip, dip that moist fingertip it into the sugar to retrieve some of it, and then lick your finger again...or you're not. It is very unlikely that any of us have the fortitude to consume all the excess cinnamon sugar. That's ok. It's alright to sometimes leave something on the table, as it were.
A Starbucks Killer?
It puzzles the more rational among us that Starbucks created a multi-billion-dollar empire off pedestrian coffee with syrup and whipped cream. How a tablespoon of syrup and a 1/2 cup of whipped cream adds $3 of value I'll never understand, and it was entirely understandable that McDonald's thought they could undercut Starbucks, offering an identical product for about 35% less cost. But consumers tend to behave as sentimentally as rationally and McDonald's will never recreate the upscale oasis ambience that engenders such customer loyalty to the Seattle chain. That said, McDonald's has created at least one warm, sweet reason to at least occasionally park under the Golden Arches for your morning caffeine fix.
Your first experience with McDonald's Donut Sticks will be a feeling of getting cheated. To be precise, you'll think they forgot to fill your order, instead handing you an empty bag. Should you resist the urge to complain to the cashier and peek inside the bag, you'll see that the donut sticks are indeed there, but you'll still feel ripped off. They're so light, so insubstantial. How can they possibly provide value?
 |
| If McDonald's wants to convince the public that they're offering value for the dollar, they should serve these in a bag small enough for six donut sticks to fill. Nobody likes to be handed a two-thirds empty bag. |
Tasting Is Equivocating
Once you take a bite of your first donut stick, your mood will start to change, almost as if impelled by nature; you can't bite down on fluffy, salty, starch, fried in fat, and coated in sugar and cinnamon without an autonomic pleasure response. Still, your neocortex might still assert itself and ask "but are these really donuts?" If your Platonic conception of donuts begins with the template of the basic cake donut, hefty, sodden, and sweet fried batter that sits like a satisfying glutenous lump in your stomach and easily serves as a proxy for a filling breakfast, then the answer is surely no, these are not real donuts. If, on the other hand, your idea of a donut is more like the classic Krispy Kreme donut -- a light, insubstantial sweet nothing that dissolves in your mouth and vanishes, like the last five minutes of dreaming before the alarm wakes you -- then these donut sticks dwell in the general vicinity of the donut.
 |
| There's a lot of air in there! No shame in that. Puff pastry, croissants, and pate-aux-choux all operate on similar principles, but the consumer should not chew a donut stick unprepared, lest they think it somehow missed their mouths. |
The Veil of Mystery Is Lifted
And yet...something still seems off. You've tasted something like this before, but it wasn't called a donut, it was something else. These sticks are so light and airy, with gigantic voids, bubbles, and pockets rendering them nearly hollow, a tender, sugar-dusted, chewy shell encasing sweet warm vapor. They collapse with each bite, deflating to something scarcely thicker than a tortilla. What do these remind us of? Churros? In flavor, certainly, but they seem more like dinner rolls or buns than churros, which again are not far from cake donuts, do. And then it hits you: these are sticks of fry-bread, that Navajo invention created out of necessity from government flour, sugar, salt, and lard that's since become a staple of state fairs as much as of Native American culture. Puffed up, bready, lighly coated in oil and enlivened with sugar and sometimes other spices. Once you accept that this is what McDonald's has decided to serve you, labels be damned, all your quibbles will disappear and you can enjoy them like the magically addictive treats that they are.
 |
| Enlarged to show texture and you can clearly see that a more accurate description of the product would be "fry-bread sticks." |
Eating Strategies
McDonald's Donut Sticks come in two order sizes, the 6-piece and the 12-piece. Because they're so light, it's quite easy to consume 12, but because they're so rich you may regret it afterwards; you'll start to feel sick before you start to feel full. I recommend starting with six and seeing if you can be content with that. They even offer a combo of six sticks and a small coffee for $3 and change, a prudent nudge I would say.
The other thing every eater must decide for themselves is what to do with the leftover cinnamon sugar that remains in the bottom of the bag or, if you dump them out onto your tray, then on your paper tray cover or napkin. You can try to incorporate some of it back into the donut stick itself by dipping the exposed bitten end into the layer of sugar after each bite uncovers a new bit of donut cross-section, but that is unlikely to use it all up. At that point, you're either the kind of person who will lick your fingertip, dip that moist fingertip it into the sugar to retrieve some of it, and then lick your finger again...or you're not. It is very unlikely that any of us have the fortitude to consume all the excess cinnamon sugar. That's ok. It's alright to sometimes leave something on the table, as it were.
 |
| The messy aftermath of a session with 12 (sorry, not sorry) donut sticks. There is no way to quickly consume all this grease-inflected cinnamon sugar and I advise against attempting to devise one. |
A Starbucks Killer?
It puzzles the more rational among us that Starbucks created a multi-billion-dollar empire off pedestrian coffee with syrup and whipped cream. How a tablespoon of syrup and a 1/2 cup of whipped cream adds $3 of value I'll never understand, and it was entirely understandable that McDonald's thought they could undercut Starbucks, offering an identical product for about 35% less cost. But consumers tend to behave as sentimentally as rationally and McDonald's will never recreate the upscale oasis ambience that engenders such customer loyalty to the Seattle chain. That said, McDonald's has created at least one warm, sweet reason to at least occasionally park under the Golden Arches for your morning caffeine fix.
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