Late night with the staff of Ma’s Donuts

By: Kimberly Osborne
Posted In: Entertainment

It’s a Friday evening in April, and in the kitchen of Ma’s Donuts on West Main Road in Middletown, baker Gel Rezendez starts working on the next morning’s batch. With a swift turn of a crank on a funnel-shaped bowl, Rezendez releases a blob of O-shaped batter into a vat of grease sizzling at a temperature of 375 degrees. As the batter floats to the surface, Rezendez turns it over with wooden sticks resembling oversized chopsticks.

After straining the donuts between two flat strainers and laying them on a cooling rack, Rezendez pokes a long metal rod through the donut holes and brings them over to a vat of cool white glaze that contains bits of donuts that had been dipped there before. Rezendez takes the donut-laden rod and spins it in the cool glaze, much different from the scalding greases he submerged the donuts in just 10 minutes ago. The finishing touch: Rezendez hangs the rod above the vat, and the glaze from the donuts rains down like a downpour.

Ma’s Donuts and More is a popular Salve hangout. During the week, the store produces 1,500 donuts and on the weekend another 400. Of the store’s 52 varieties, the most popular are honey-dipped and chocolate-frosted.

Most customers, though, hardly realize what’s involved in making these favorites. In the kitchen with Rezendez, Ivan Nieolatgo fills the donuts and prepares to deliver the appropriate orders to the Ma’s satellite locations. Nieolatgo, who has been working at Ma’s for two and a half years, says that the task of filling the donuts usually takes about an hour and a half. He uses a gallon of jelly and a gallon of Boston Cr