A Glazed & Amused thread

Oliebollen

The Dutch New Year's doughnut, and the grandfather of the American one.

The oldest recipe for an oliekoek, an oil cake of dough, raisins, apples and almonds, is in a Dutch cookbook from 1667. By 1868 the word was oliebol, oil ball, and that is what the Netherlands eats on New Year's Eve: tens of millions in a single week, two or three per person, most of them plain or raisin.

Dutch settlers brought the olykoek to New Amsterdam. In 1809 Washington Irving described "balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called dough-nuts, or olykoeks." That sentence is the usual case for the oliebol as the ancestor of the American donut.

The towns that kept the original were built by 19th-century Dutch Reformed emigration: Holland and Grandville in Michigan, Pella in Iowa, Lynden in Washington. A warning about the word Dutch, though. Most donut shops with it in the name have no tie to the Netherlands at all, and Pennsylvania Dutch means German. The stops below are the ones that hold up.

That is a Dutch specialty treat that's only rolled out on New Year's Eve, however we've bent those rules and we offer them every Saturday.

When to go

Oliebollen are a New Year's Eve food. In the Dutch towns, expect them the last week of December. Two exceptions: Lynden fries them every Saturday, Oliboli all year. Pella's Kerstmarkt in early December and Holland's Tulip Time in May are when the Dutch cases are fullest.

Where they are

Rolling out the map…

Positions are approximate.

The bakeries

Lynden Dutch Bakery
421 Front St, Lynden, WA · since 1907
Founded in 1907 in a Whatcom County town that, as owner Chad Simmons puts it, became largely a Dutch community. Chad and Julee Simmons, a former accountant and a former teacher, bought it with no bakery background.
Its most popular item is the oliebol, fried every Saturday morning instead of only on New Year's Eve, alongside almond tarts, raisin buns, boterkoek, speculaas and stroopwafels made on an antique crank machine.
Known for: Saturday oliebollen since 1907
Written about, not listed. A general Dutch bakery, so it lives on this trail rather than in the listings.
Oliboli Donuts
135 W 1st St #B, Tustin, CA
Victor and Brooke DesPrez opened Oliboli in Old Town Tustin in October 2018 with their daughter and nephew. The name is the oliebol, the logo is a stone mill, and the family has no Dutch heritage at all.
They make oliebollen year-round from a 40-hour yeasted dough with apples, currants, raisins, lemon peel and spice. "We'll have some very upset customers if we try and take them off of the menu," Brooke says. The rest of the case runs to pistachio, lavender sugar and cactus pear.
Known for: Year-round oliebollen, modern donuts
Jaarsma Bakery
727 Franklin St, Pella, IA · since 1898
Harmon Jaarsma, an immigrant from Friesland, opened the bakery in 1898. It is in its fifth generation. The Dutch letter, an S of almond paste in pastry first made for Sinterklaas Day, is still made to his recipe, now on a machine that takes six people.
The case holds raised glazed donut holes, speculaas, cream horns and strudel. Pella's December Kerstmarkt is the time to go. Oliebollen were not confirmed here, so ask; Pella's other Dutch bakery, Vander Ploeg, dates to 1847.
Known for: Dutch letters since 1898
Written about, not listed. A general Dutch bakery, so it lives on this trail rather than in the listings.
Steenstra's Royal Dutch Bakery
3940 30th St SW, Grandville, MI · since 1953
Open since 1953 and run by Delynn and Rich Steenstra. The family's Dutch mix cookie recipe, Rich says, has been around since the bakery started and may go back to his grandfather.
The case is Dutch: banketstaaf and S-shaped letters filled with almond paste, speculaas pressed with windmills, boterkoek, and oliebollen with raisins and powdered sugar when available, next to the yeast donuts and Boston cremes.
Known for: Oliebollen, banket, Dutch yeast donuts
See the listing →
Van's Pastry Shoppe
955 Fulton St E, Grand Rapids, MI
Grand Rapids' oldest bakery. "The bakery started in the early '20s when my great-grandpa came over from the old country," says owner David Vander Meer. Same Fulton Street building since 1942, four generations in, a fifth rolling dough in the summers.
This stop is Dutch by surname and neighborhood rather than menu. What it has is cheap classic glazed, cake and filled doughnuts, apple fritters and a round English muffin bread, made the same way for a century.
Known for: Century-old Dutch-family doughnuts
See the listing →
deBoer Bakkerij
360 Douglas Ave, Holland, MI
The deBoer family emigrated from Kollum in 1956. Grandfather worked in several Holland bakeries before the family opened its own, run today by brothers Jacob, Mitchiel and Samuel.
Banket, krakelingen, farmer's bread, saucijzenbroodjes and a donut case, plus a breakfast room since 2008 with Dutch Bennies and klompen cakes. Ask about oliebollen at Tulip Time or New Year's.
Known for: Banket, krakelingen, Holland donuts
Dutch Girl Donuts
19000 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI · since 1947
John and Cecelia Timmer moved from Grand Rapids to Detroit in 1947, took over a former Dixie Cream franchise at Woodward and Seven Mile, and renamed it for Cecelia, the Dutch girl on the awning in bonnet and clogs. The motto: "Made in sight by folks in white."
The shop closed when owner Gene Timmer died in 2021. Funeral director Paddy Lynch reopened it in May 2024 and hired the family's John Timmer to keep the recipe and flour blend. No oliebollen here; the Dutch is the name and the family.
Known for: Detroit's Dutch-named donut institution

Every donut in this directory descends from a ball of dough fried in a Dutch kitchen. Find a shop near you and thank the oliebol.

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Where they are

The bakeries

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