Donut memories

           I love jelly donuts.  Well, more specifically, I loved Frannie Belzer's father's jelly donuts, the one's we used to get from Belzer's bakery on 5th street in Olney, back in the '50s and '60s.   Mr. Belzer fried his donuts, so the outside was a little crisp.  He rolled them in granulated sugar, not the awful 10X powdered stuff that gets all over your clothes.  Then he pumped them so full of raspberry jam that the skin on the top started to crack.  They were amazing!

           Until the summer of the camping trip: I must have been 11 or twelve.  Our Girl Scout troop camped at Camp Laughing Waters outside of Philadelphia for a week each summer.  We had a huge troop, 66 girls, the second largest in the city.  Every summer we turned into the world's worse softball team so we could keep meeting, and we went camping.  I'm not sure how many went on the camping trip, somewhere between 12 and 20, I guess.  Frannie went though, and she brought jelly donuts.  My mother picked some up too.  Midweek, Frannie's father came and brought more, and Judy Howard's mother did the same.  We ended up with about a dozen donuts for each person.

          This was handled the way parents handled things back then.  Rule 1: one does not waste food.  No breakfast until you eat a 1/2 a jelly donut.  What's for breakfast?  Scrambled eggs and Jelly donuts.  No dinner till you eat 1/2 a jelly donut.  No dessert until you eat 1/2 a jelly donut.  What's for dessert?  Would you like chocolate pudding on jelly donuts or bread pudding made out of jelly donuts?  The end of the camping trip and the end of the jelly donuts came out about even.

           I would like to say it was years before I could face another jelly donut.  But actually, it only took about a week.  And 60 years later, I'm still looking for a donut just like those; I have tested lots of them and found them wanting, but I'm still willing to test more.

Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 27, 2021 at 4:35 PM

    I loved getting cookies from Belzers Bakery when I lived on Nedro.. I ate a lot of cookies starting when I came out the door. I remember it was near and on same side of the street as Polis dry cleaners.

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  2. Terri KopishkeMay 29, 2025 at 2:29 PM

    I'm assuming "Frannie Belzer" was my aunt Francine - it's nice to hear people remember my grandfather's bakery fondly. Sadly, I never got to meet him, nor experience his yummy doughnuts or giant chocolate chip cookies as he passed away shortly before I was born. Glad so many people loved his baked goods - we still have some of his recipes and baking pans and still make his pound cake in the giant egg shaped pans at Easter and his butter cookies every year for Christmas.

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