Donuts--not just donuts any more

In the beginning there were three kinds of donuts: cake, jelly-filled, and glazed. The cake donuts were often covered in cinnamon-sugar, the jelly donuts were dusted with powdered sugar (making it impossible to eat one on the sly) and glazed (both cake and yeast) were dunked in a transparent bath of sweet syrup that grew translucent and crackled as it dried. Three kinds of donuts—the holy trinity of pastries. Wanting more seemed almost … blasphemous. But that was then and this is now. Now, thanks to the whims of the foodie gods, donuts are a “thing.” And as donut shops get more and more competitive with the varieties they offer, we have to ask—how much modification can a donut take before it’s not a donut any more and some sort of strange (but quite possibly delicious) frankenfood? It used to be that if you ordered a donut, you would get a circle of fried dough with a hole in the middle unless said donut was filled with jelly or custard where the hole should be. Then bagels made the jump from ethnic food to everybody’s favorite nosh and things got a little more confusing because bagels are also round dough with holes in the center, though they were baked and not fried. It was a lot simpler when cupcakes were the pastry du jour. A cupcake either is or is not a cupcake. There are no transitional states as there are with donuts—hybrids inspired by everything from Pop-Tarts to croquembouche http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquembouche . It’s all good, but is it a donut? So we have to ask—what’s the most outrageously delicious donut configuration you’ve ever tried and where did you get it?