a style · HIThe malasada counter
also: Hawaiian donut shop
Sold hot, in a paper bag with sugar already in it.
A bakery counter in Hawaii selling malasadas — no hole, no filling by default, rolled in sugar — by the dozen in a box or hot by the piece in a bag.
The story Cited · wp-malassada
Portuguese contract labourers from Madeira and the Azores brought the malasada to the islands. The pastry descends from filhós and was carried through Macaronesia by the sixteenth-century sugar trade. In Hawaii it stopped being a Carnival food and became an everyday one, which is not what happened to it anywhere else.
Malasadas are called Hawaiian donuts often enough on the mainland that the name has travelled back.
How it is done Tradition
A wet, rich yeast dough, hand-pulled rather than cut, fried to order in the shops that can manage it, and dropped straight into sugar.
Today Tradition
Filled versions — haupia, custard, guava — are standard now. The plain one is the one people queue for.
The particulars
| state | HI |
|---|---|
| dough | yeast |
| counter | donuts-only |
| region | Hawaii |
| confidence | high · updated 2026-09-16 |
Who it runs with
Where we got it
Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.