Early birds get the pine cones at Daylight Donuts in Warner Robins

Tulsa-based Daylight Donuts rewards customers who pass by the two chain doughnut shops on Russell Parkway in Warner Robins by offering light yeast pastries and unique cake ones. We recently purchased three boxes of everything they had one weekend morning and stuffed our mouths while we talked about how rough we had it.

The first thing you notice is how tiny the shop is, until you see there are many more tables beyond the counter. When we visited, two old guys were discussing the election, a soccer-uniform clad family was picking up a few dozen for their team, and a couple chatted over coffee in the back.

The next thing you notice is how many doughnut and pastry choices you have in the gleaming glass counter. Sprinkles sparkle like jewels, bear claws all but reach out to grab you and cinnamon rolls spin in your vision until you are hypnotized. Because they open at 5 a.m., the most popular items were already gone, so we made do with the 50 choices that were left.

Our top honors went to their sausage rolls, mostly because they cut through the sweetness of everything else. Some people top them with maple syrup, some like mustard, we liked them just as they were. Our next favorite were the cinnamon rolls, but their lack of cinnamon made them more like sweet rolls.

The only negative I had for some of the items was the artificial flavor. Key lime filled, strawberry cream cheese, apple and maple were all good pastries but left an unpleasant aftertaste. I'd stick with the pure pastry items like bear claws, red velvet cake doughnuts and apple fritters.

They were out of the No. 1 favorite, the pine cone, which is a doughnut that has been scored before frying, to create extra crispy points resembling a pine cone. Prices are a little less than Krispy Kreme for a dozen, a little more for a single specialty doughnut. The hours are early, so come before work Wednesday through Friday or on the weekend.

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This story was originally published May 12, 2016 at 10:00 PM with the headline "Early birds get the pine cones at Daylight Donuts in Warner Robins."