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My Central New York friend, Mariana Cruz and I teamed up to try every single Tim Hortons’ donut and rank them. Some donuts we’ve had before while others I’ve never heard of before. However, our stomachs could only handle 10 of them.

“It’s not humanly possible to eat this in one sitting.” she concluded.

However, doing our best, we rated each out of 5 stars. Out of those 10, here were our 5 favorites:

5) Sour Cream Glaze

I know bakeries like to add sour cream to make the dessert fluffier, but I wasn’t sure how a sour cream glaze works. I found the glaze to be a perfect crunch shell to the soft texture of the donut. While I was taste testing, the donut reminded me more of an cake.

While I really liked this donut, it’s not my go-to pick from a dozen. If this was like picking teams for elementary school kickball, the sour cream glaze donut would be one of the last selected.

4) Boston Cream

With Boston Cream being one of my favorites, I rated it a little lower on the list in account of my own biases. As a Boston cream fan, nothing brings me more joy than the gooey cream inside the donut to counter the sweetness of the chocolate frosting on the outside. That being said, I actually prefer the Tim Hortons Boston Cream to other donut shops.

Doing a little bit of research post-taste testing, each donut shop makes different cream for the Boston cream donut. For example, Tim Hortons uses Venetian Cream, a whipped, airy cream compared to Dunkin Donuts’ Bavarian Cream, which uses gelatin to hold its structure. For me, I prefer the whipped pastry cream of the Tim Horton’s donut than the custard-like cream of their adversary.

3) Blueberry

Mariana and I both agreed that we have biases towards blueberries in general and Tim Hortons did not fail us. This classic is like a condensed version of a blueberry pie with little specs of blueberries and the wonderful blue hue on the inside of the donut. The Tim Hortons signature glaze evenly coats the donut, bringing a slight crunch in each bite.

This might be weird, but I might actually prefer the Timbit to the actual donut? I think a blueberry pastry being bite sized and typically found at the bottom of the Timbits box makes me mentally savor it more as it being rarer and more special. With the donut, I have more bites to take and lose that “blueberry scarcity” mindset.  

2) Honey Dip

Initially, Mariana and I had trouble deciphering which glazed donut was which. As soon as we tried this one, it was an immediate glance at each other of this is honey dip. The airy texture of the donut helps the honey flavors melt together in each bite.

However, I wasn’t a fan of sticky hands post-taste test. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as sweet as I thought it was going to be, but it’s too sweet where I can find myself eating more than one.

1) Apple Fritter

As we started to get full from all the donut-testing, Mariana and I were so intimidated to try this. The large bear claw shaped donut felt like it was getting bigger as we tried the other donuts around it. In my experience, I’ve only had apple fritters from 7 Elevens and other connivence stores, so I wasn’t expecting much as I didn’t want the apple fritter to take the stomach space of “actually” good donuts.

Finally, Mariana said “We got eat the apple fritter, we just have to go for it.” Apparently, all apple fritters are not made equally. The blend of cinnamon and apple bits brought memories of crunchy leaves and an autumn breeze, softened with the sugar glaze on top. Personally, I’ve never been a dessert-for-breakfast” kind of girl, but this would be my go-to donut for it.

I can now see why Tim Hortons describes this as a timeless classic as this flavor is perfect for all four seasons.

Taste-testing the donuts made me realize the variety Tim Hortons has. I didn’t even know that they had several glaze donuts to choose from! “As a Central New York connoisseur,” Mariana said, “Tim Hortons donut, on average, could be less sweet than Dunkin Donuts?”

While I agree with certain aspects, I find Tim Hortons makes their donuts as pastries while Dunkin makes sweet desserts. Neither is necessarily bad, but Tim Hortons donuts have richer and indulgent flavors that differ from quality of Dunkin’s Donuts. Since 2019, Dunkin has shifted its focus to be more beverage-lead, dropping the ‘Donut’ in their name, to compete with other fast coffee shops.

Coming up I will also have my top 5 Tim Hortons dislikes, Let me know what else you would like me to try!