There’s no shortage of doughnuts in Philadelphia, but West Coast transplants have to look farther afield to find the pastries they call “maple bars” back home.
A maple bar is a rectangular doughnut topped with maple frosting and sometimes bacon. They’re commonly found in many California bakeries. A reader wrote to Curious Philly, the Inquirer’s platform where readers can ask our journalists questions, to find out why the ubiquitous West Coast doughnut hasn’t made its way to Philadelphia.
The answer? It’s complicated. There’s no scarcity of maple-flavored pastries in Philadelphia, but a survey of some of the city’s major doughnut purveyors turned up nothing in the rectangular shape of the maple bar.
At Reading Terminal, Beiler’s sells a round doughnut filled with maple-flavored cream and garnished with frosting and bacon, as well as a maple creme variety. The city’s Federal Donuts locations have no regular maple flavor in rotation but have featured it in limited-edition varieties, such as October’s pumpkin-pecan-maple.
However, it turns out a maple bar by another name may be just as sweet. West of the city, Pennsylvania Dutch and Lancaster County bakeries serve what are known as Long Johns — doughnuts cut into oblong rectangles that closely resemble maple bars. They can be frosted or not, filled or unfilled. Some shops might call them “eclair doughnuts,” especially the ones filled with cream or custard.
The Shady Maple Smorgasbord, a farm stand and restaurant in East Earl, sells Long Johns in 14 varieties, including maple bacon chocolate and sweet potato. Lancaster’s Central Market boasts several local vendors who offer them.
Achenbach’s Pastries in Leola, about 10 miles outside Lancaster, has been serving the doughnuts since 1954 and has even christened itself the birthplace of the Long John. Dave Burkholder, one of the owners, acknowledged that the bakery wasn’t the first to make Long Johns, but the bakery has become so well-known for the pastries its shop even sells plush toys shaped like them.
“Lots of places make Long Johns, but a lot of them are more square, and ours are rounded off at the ends, like a hot dog bun," he said. “And the icing on top is what makes the Long John, as far as I’m concerned. Ours is creamy, and just right.”
In recent years, Achenbach’s has even pioneered the “Long John cake,” a larger dessert made by stacking and layering the pastries together in the shape of a cake that can be taken apart one at a time. The bakery has provided such desserts for everything from birthday parties to weddings.
“People just walk up and pull off a Long John," he said. “They’re very popular.”
