Donuts

What Is a Maple Bar? The Utah Name for a Maple Long John

10 October 2026 · 4 min read

A maple bar is a rectangular donut made from raised yeast dough with maple icing across the top. If you grew up in Utah, that is simply what it is called. If you grew up in Ohio, you have been calling the identical donut a maple long john your whole life. Same pastry, two regional names, and a small amount of confusion at the counter whenever the two groups meet.

What it actually is

Start with the dough, because that is what separates it from everything it gets mistaken for. A maple bar is raised yeast dough - the same family as a glazed donut. It is proved until it is full of air, rolled and cut into a rectangle rather than a ring, fried, and then iced along the top face with maple.

It is not filled. That matters, because the two pastries people most often confuse it with both are.

Why Utah says bar and the rest of the country says long john

There is no difference in the donut. The name split along regional lines and simply stuck. Across Utah, Idaho and the Pacific Northwest it is a maple bar. Through the Midwest and much of the East it is a long john, with the flavour named after it - maple long john, chocolate long john.

Our board lists it as Long John - Maple, because that is the trade name, and we carry a chocolate one beside it. Ask for a maple bar and nobody behind the counter will blink. It is the same donut and we hand it over either way.

Maple bar vs eclair

This is the one worth knowing, because the two look alike in a case and have almost nothing in common.

An eclair is choux pastry. It is piped and baked, it puffs hollow in the oven, and it is then filled with cream and glazed. A maple bar is yeast dough, it is fried, and it is solid the whole way through. One is a bakery pastry, the other is a donut. If you bite into something expecting cream and find soft fried dough, you reached for the bar.

Maple bar vs bismark

Shape first, filling second. A bismark is round and filled - ours come in lemon and raspberry. A maple bar is a rectangle and is not filled. Both sit on the same specialty board at the same price, so the choice is purely what you feel like: icing on top, or fruit in the middle.

Maple bar vs buttermilk bar

Also worth separating, because the word bar is doing double duty. A buttermilk bar is a cake donut - batter-based, dense, craggy at the edges, fried so the surface splits. A maple bar is raised - light, airy, smooth-topped. Same silhouette on the shelf, opposite textures in the hand.

What ours costs

$2.75 each, on the specialty board with the Bavarian cream, both bismarks, the buttermilk bar, the cinnamon twist, the persian and the fritter - all the same single price.

The dozen deal applies the way it does across the board: buy ten, get two free, and the discount does not care what is in the box. You can mix maple bars with glazed, cake, or anything else in the case and still get the two free.

One thing to know before you come

All of our donuts contain dairy, wheat and egg, and we do not have a gluten-free option. If that rules it out for you, better to know now than at the counter.

Where and when

Made fresh with the morning trays from 5:00am at Spanish Fork, Ogden and St. George, six days a week. The specialty board is the part of the case that moves fastest, so the earlier you come the more of it is still there.

Monday to Thursday, every donut in the case is half price after 2:00pm at Spanish Fork and St. George. Ogden does not run that one.

Common questions

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