Little Pine Donuts is a small-batch, family business that opened up at the beginning of this year, specializing in hand-made filled brioche doughnuts. The business has been wildly popular, selling the doughnuts both online for delivery or pickup, and was also selling on Saturdays at the Northwest Crossing Farmers Market earlier in the season (where customers would line up for an hour-plus and they sold out in quickly, I’ve heard). Here’s some background from the “about” page of the website:

Little Pine Donuts is a local business based in Bend, OR. It was founded through a love for baking, donuts (obviously), and an obsession for finding the perfectly filled donut in Bend. We are a family-run, small business providing FRESH and delicious donuts to our amazing community! We are committed to serving the fluffiest and lightest donuts, with a filling that is not overly sweet. Our custards and fillings (excluding Nutella) are all made from scratch, our donuts are hand rolled every morning, and we use the highest quality ingredients. We never use preservatives or stabilizers!

Our donuts are made in small batches everyday in order to ensure an end product that we are proud of. Whether you’re looking for a personal box for yourself, some donuts to bring home and enjoy, or a couple dozen to share with your workplace, we hope our donuts will leave you satisfied and coming back for more.

You can order online (based on scheduled dates and times, so you’ll need to plan ahead), and occasionally the owner does a “flash sale” on social media if she has extra doughnuts on hand (first-come, first-served). Recently we tried them out with a regular order, and another when we were able to squeeze in an order via flash sale.

I’ll say right off the bat, anytime I see doughnuts advertised as baked with an “alternative” dough or method, I’m hugely skeptical. I’m not a fan of cronuts, for instance. (Yeah, I’m probably a doughnut snob…) So yes, I approached these brioche doughnuts with doubts—and I was wrong. These are the real deal.

As noted, we’ve ordered twice so far, and opted for (contact-less) pickup (which was extremely easy and accommodating). The first time, we got half a dozen and tried a variety of the flavors: vanilla, Nutella, crème brulée, and tiramisu.

These were, frankly, amazing, and some of the best doughnuts I’ve eaten in recent memory. Tender with a great bite without being chewy, a great amount of filling, just the right amount of sweet both in the dough and the fillings. The brioche dough is the star, and it stays tender and moist even after a couple of days (though you really do want to eat these as fresh as possible). Don’t discount the fillings however, they are creamy and custard-y and craveable.

The flash sale four-pack we ordered (pictured at the top of this post) were the flavors banana cream and crème brulée again, and I thought to take some additional pictures to get a sense of them:

Banana cream on the left, with a Nilla Wafer (just like a banana pudding or a banana cream pie!), crème brulée on the right with a custard filling and bruléed sugar on top.

See how much filling there is?

The banana cream was great and I’d definitely get that one again. All of the others were really good too. We haven’t tried any of the fruit-based (jam) flavors, so I can’t speak to those, but I suspect they would be just as good.

Seriously, these are great doughnuts, and I highly recommend them (at the risk of making it harder to get them myself!). They are definitely a treat so if you’re looking to order online, plan ahead as I mentioned; you probably won’t be able to get a regular order for at least a week or more. But they are very worth it.

Little Pine Donuts webpage.