Doughnut Eaters Are In Luck This St. Patrick's Day At Krispy Kreme

After Valentine's Day had its heart-shaped treats deflated, the focus now briefly shifts to St. Patrick's Day, which has everyone seeing, feeling, and even eating green. Krispy Kreme is always game to celebrate almost any holiday, and has been gaga for green since at least 2010. What started off as simple sprinkle doughnuts, green ones, and even one shaped like a shamrock, has evolved in the past decade and a half. The flavors and designs always seem to try and top what came before, where eaters have encountered the likes of the elusive Leprechaun Trap one from 2020, the pointy Lucky Unicorn in the following year, 2022's adorable, red-bearded Lenny Leprechaun (the same year it sold 1.63 billion doughnuts), 2023's fortunate Golden Cookies & Kreme, and last year's delightfully colored Luck of the Rainbow Doughnut.

For 2025, Krispy Kreme is springing up four new doughnut creations to celebrate St. Patrick's Day — Choco-Shenanigans, Over the Rainbow, Pot of Gold, and St Patty's Swirl. In a statement, Dave Skena, Chief Growth Officer for Krispy Kreme said "If you're planning any holiday shenanigans — and you should — our St. Patrick's Day Collection will make them more festive and fun." He added, "When you share these doughnuts, you'll make your own luck. No leprechaun required."

So, are these Krispy Kreme St. Patty's doughnuts magically delicious, or is the foursome perhaps tragically un-delicious? I tried my luck and took out a dozen to see where the truth lies in this chew and review. Are you lucky?

Krispy Kreme's St. Patrick's Day Doughnuts Collection consists of four doughnuts — Choco-Shenanigans, Over the Rainbow, Pot of Gold, and St Patty's Swirl. They will be available for sale starting on Monday, March 10 and sticking around in stores, while supplies last, until Monday, March 17, St. Patrick's Day (and while you're out, check out these spots to get free food). In addition, during this run there is also a Chocolate Iced Glazed Doughnut with green St. Patrick's Day Sprinkles, and from the 15th to the 17th only, Krispy Kreme is bringing back the O'riginal Glazed Doughnut, which is simply an Original Glazed doughnut turned green.

These doughnuts are available to purchase at participating locations in the United States only. There are several dominations in which to order them at Krispy Kreme locations: à la carte, as a three-pack, which doesn't include the Pot of Gold doughnut, and as a "Taste O'Luck" dozen, which includes two of each specialty flavor, and four Original Glazed Doughnuts, house in a fun and colorful box. While price may vary by location, at a Manhattan, New York location, the prices were respectively $2.89 per doughnut, $8.19 for a 3-pack, and $23.19 for a dozen. At select grocery stores, six-packs delivered directly from Krispy Kreme will also be available for sale.

The doughnuts can be purchased anytime Krispy Kreme is open, while supplies last, in-store, at the counter, or by using a kiosk or drive-thru where available. They can also be purchased in advance for pick-up or delivery through Krispy Kreme's app or website, perfect for a sweet treat after your full Irish breakfast on St. Patrick's Day.

The Choco-Shenanigans Doughnut had a familiar look to past plaid St. Patty's creations by Krispy Kreme, but with a bit of a twist. Instead of uniform stripes, here the green icing drizzles are cross-hatched as if an Irish spider web-designed it. Within the hatched lines are a smattering of gold dust and tiny gold "coins."

The gold decoration didn't have any particular flavor to them, but the coins had a solid crunch. The chocolate icing is solid as per usual, and the small strips of green icing tasted just the yummy same. The interior white creme looks like the stuff Twinkies are made of but is way fluffier and super creamy. Taken as a whole, this doughnut was super-sweet, and shined with its multitude of flavors and textures that formed a pretty straight-forward, yet delicious and chocolatey treat.

There's quite a lot of "Shenanigans" within this doughnut's list of ingredients. Within and on this enriched wheat flour doughnut, which contains wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, cocoa, chocolate liquor, confectioner's glaze, gum acacia, xanthan gum, tapioca starch, tapioca syrup, edible gold glitter, and gold shimmer. The Swirl doughnut nets 370 calories, 170 calories from fat, 19 total grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 170 milligrams of sodium, 46 grams of total carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 27 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein. It contains the allergens egg, milk, soy, and wheat.

St. Patrick's Day is all about the green, but the employment of a rainbow is one way to break things up and expand the color palette. There always seems to be one rainbow-centric doughnut in Krispy Kreme's mid-March line-up, and this year's goes by the name of Over The Rainbow. This one looks like a random act of needlessness, where a neon-lime green iced-shell plays host to the required rainbow candy piece, and it is then outfitted with what looks like a haphazard spill of various jimmies and confetti sprinkles here and there and anywhere.

The green icing has a vanilla flavoring to it, and the sprinkles, nothing more than you'd expect. The creme inside this one is cake batter, which was winning with its buttery smoothness. Taken in one bite, this one hit similar taste notes like Choco-Shenanigans, but in a more vanilla way. That's a great thing!

The ingredients of this doughnut is a rainbow of elements, and highlights include dried milk powder, dried egg yolks, oat fiber, cream of tartar, locust bean gum, rice cereal, tapioca starch, carnauba wax, and spirulina extract. The Rainbow doughnut nets 360 calories, 160 calories from fat, 18 total grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 190 milligrams of sodium, 46 grams of total carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 27 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein. It contains the allergens egg, milk, soy, and wheat.

While the three other doughnuts in this collection either focus or feature hints of green, the Pot of Gold one pushes forward without dedicating any real estate to the lucky color. Gold is obviously the theme here, by name, and slight in appearance, with small iotas of gold coin glitter sprinkled and sugar crystals sitting atop a sandy mound of caramel flavored buttercreme, which itself fills the doughnut hole surrounded by a layer of golden caramel flavored icing.

The caramel icing is straight-up luscious. The interior whipped-caramel creme somehow tops the icing, and the gold pieces add a bit of texture. Cutting the doughnut in half, you see the creme wasn't just a topper, but it penetrated all the way through the length of the doughnut. In a complete bite, the gold adornment didn't add much to the finish product, which is decadently heavily and heavenly caramel-forward.

The Pot of Gold doughnut shares similar attributes to the other three, and includes ingredients that run the gamut from tocopherols, to vitamin A Palmitate, guar gum, locust bean gum, margarine, and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose. This Golden doughnut nets 340 calories, 140 calories from fat, 15 total grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 150 milligrams of sodium, 48 grams of total carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 33 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein. It contains the allergens egg, milk, soy, and wheat.

True to its name, St. Patty's Swirl Doughnut has a curly look to its topping, thanks to its a pair of white and green lines circulating from the hole out to the edges, where the icing ends. The green and white swirls look like a sugar-lover's dream, being overloaded with crystals, but to some it may look like a saccharine nightmare. Looking closer, there are even golden sugar crystals strewn about on the top.

I attempted to taste just the top, but it was hard to dislodge it from the doughnut, and even a lick didn't reveal much. A bite of the doughnut mainly led with the standard great taste of Krispy Kreme's Original Glazed Donut coming through, and accented, for better or worse, with the crunch of those sugar crystals. It was a doughnut more enjoyable to look at than to eat... unless you wanted your teeth to get a bit of grinding in.

St. Patty's doughnut's ingredient list also runs long, and starts with an enriched wheat flour dough, and also contains such magical sounding elements such as sanding sugar, edible gold glitter, confectioner's glaze, and a gold shimmer made of mica based pearlescent pigment. The Swirl doughnut nets 270 calories, 100 calories from fat, 11 total grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 105 milligrams of sodium, 43 grams of total carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 30 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein. It contains the allergens egg, milk, soy, and wheat.

This St. Patrick's Day, we are all in such luck with the four doughnut offerings supplied by Krispy Kreme. Visually, they are a hodgepodge of styles, colors and design that try their best to invoke the holiday, even if it has done better in years past in this department.

Looks are one thing, but taste is really the only thing that matters, and here we have one super-fantastic doughnut, two really great ones, and a fourth that is totally fine, but maybe you don't necessarily need to "Irish spring" for. The latter in question is the sugar-encrusted St. Patty's Swirl, which physically looks like quite the mover, but ultimately didn't stand out or could fully compete with the other three in the collection.

Coco-Shenanigans and Over The Rainbow share much in common, with completely icy coverings, pizzazz-y decorative spirit, yummy whip-smart creme fillings, and an all-around tastiness from top to bottom. The only real differences are the main flavoring between chocolate or vanilla exteriors, but these doughnuts will hit that sweet spot for whichever flavor you normally side with. The Pot of Gold Doughnut was quite the discovery in this batch, swimming in caramel richness, and one that is beyond worth spelunking for, should your travels take you to Krispy Kreme sometime over the next week.

On the first day of release of Krispy Kreme's 2025 St. Patrick's Day Doughnut Collection, I headed over to my nearest location in Manhattan, New York and purchased a dozen for the purposes of this taste test. I brought the doughnuts to my home for taste testing, which was done in alphabetical order. Tasting began by sampling each of its elements individually before eating the doughnut as a whole. I cut the doughnut into pieces with a knife for first, second, and if necessary, third rounds of tastings. The doughnuts were sampled by me and another person, whose opinions were noted.

The ultimate criteria for determining the taste test results in this chew and review was based on flavor, texture, smell, design, St. Patrick-ness, overall lovability, and likelihood of reordering any or all of them again. The short answer is this four-leaf clover of flavors will sure to add a nice sweet Irish-pinch to the days leading up to the greenest of all holidays (that isn't Arbor Day). Maybe next Krispy Kreme can come out with some mochi doughnuts for me to try.