Gourmet donuts continue to be a top-selling product for bakeries and donut shops. Customers are willing to pay a little more for a flavor-packed sweet good. Filled donuts in particular hold plenty of possibilities, but they can be hard to produce on a larger scale.

Typically, bakers will inject fillings into donut using pastry bags, but that can be troublesome when time is of the essence or you’re short on staff. That’s where donut fillers can come into play. These machines allow bakers to produce gourmet filled donuts with ease. Ideal for use in bakeries, cafés, and donut shops, a donut filling machine can inject jelly, cream, marshmallow, and other delicious fillings into baked goods.

Belshaw Adamatic’s new Autofiller Donut Injector has been designed to put donut production first. It fills donuts quickly and smoothly, with a wide range of fillings. The injector doesn’t occupy much space, but the donuts that can be injected in just 15-30 minutes could be enough to fill up an entire display case.

The Autofiller can accommodate different nozzles, including mini nozzles for injecting donut holes, and a 4-pronged nozzle for filling ring donuts. It comes preloaded with icon images for the most popular fillings like jam, custard, chocolate, lemon, apple, and various creams. This allows employees to get up to speed with barely any training on the equipment. It also has electronic storage for up to 85 recipes. Each recipe sets the speed, duration, and “suckback” for each injection. “Suckback” stops any tendency to drip and enables the injector to prefill with material prior to each injection.

The hopper holds 20 pounds, which is a good size for stores, donut shops, and medium scale producers. You can use several hoppers and swap them for different fillings. Autofiller is also maintenance free, as the base is sealed and requires only a wipe down after each use. The upper injector/hopper unit contains only a few components, which are easy to clean.

Filled ring donuts are a relatively new concept in the baking world, and an exciting one. In June 2019, Krispy Kreme introduced a mainstream version of filled ring donuts, which were filled with the choice of classic or chocolate cream. Since then, the chain has offered limited-time versions such as a gingerbread ring donut filled with cheesecake cream during December and a glazed ring donut filled with coffee cream for National Coffee Day in September.

Rheon provides an alternative to the American style of ring donut making with its Filled Ring Donut Forming Device, which attaches to the Cornucopia KN550 encrusting machine.

John Giacoio, VP of Sales for Rheon, says that this device provides a unique answer to the unique challenge of filling a ring donut.

“For filled donuts it is important to use a stable filling that will not blow out when fried,” he says. “When using the Rheon co-extruder, the only concern we have is that the dough be at least a little stiffer than the filling, but this can be accomplished by adjusting the temperature of either material. This allows us to get an even amount of dough all around the product with less chance of leaking. We have customers making filled donut holes. Twisted donuts where two strands of filled dough are wrapped around each other but each strand can have a different filling. We also have customers that use the twisting option, but when they turn off this device, it allows them to make a filled donut ring.”

The filled donut ring device extrudes two filled strands of product, and when the patented shutter system closes on them, it connects the ends of the two strands and seals them together. The shutter opens and allows the two strands to pass unattached, then it closes again, sealing and connecting the strands, making a teardrop shape. As this teardrop shape is placed on the belt it opens to a ring shape. The resulting donut can have one or two different fillings.