It was a day filled with food, fun, music and drinks. The Taste of Syracuse returned this year after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. One stand is excited to be back cooking up fresh, hot donuts and offer glazed and confused flavors.
It all starts with the batter -- that’s the key to getting the perfect donut.
Izabella Valenti is a donut expert when it comes to the family business, Glazed and Confused.
“We’re open here every festival,” Valenti said. “We always do the Dizzy Pig, which is a maple glaze, candied bacon and bourbon sugar.”
Along with Izabella is her brother, mom and dad. She says they started the business in 2016 as just a stand at the Taste of Syracuse.
“We were just having fun with it and everyone was like, ‘no you need to open up a shop, these donuts are so good.’ We were like, ‘OK, maybe.’ So we opened up in the fall of 2017, a year and a half later.”
The restaurant industry suffered a lot from the pandemic, and because of COVID-19 the Taste of Syracuse hasn’t happened since 2019.
“We were so fortunate,” Valenti said. “We have a donut food truck. It was an old UPS truck, we transformed it, this whole thing. So we were able to go out to neighborhoods during COVID and we dropped off six boxes or twelve boxes to families. It was contactless, we would just pull up, people would wave outside because kids loved the big truck. We would just drop off the donuts and then we would leave.”
Valenti says being back at the festival is exciting and they’re offering flavors that can’t be purchased at the shop but the Dizzy Pig is what keeps customers coming back.
“Lots of time and effort I put into this, so I kind of perfected it” Valenti said. “So I do half of the tray first, so I glaze them first.”
Then she adds a handful of the candied bacon and tops the donut off with bourbon sugar.
If you want more glazed and confused flavors you can visit their shop which is located on Clinton Street.