McDonald’s Has Fried Cheese Doughnuts & It’s Like The Dessert Version Of Mozzarella Sticks

And today in Fast Food Items That Sadly Exist Only In Countries In Which I Do Not Currently Live, we have this: McDonald’s Germany now has fried cheese doughnuts on the menu. Officially, they are called Camembert Donuts, and the mere knowledge of their existence has inspired in me a great deal of regret about my lunch options for today. Given that I have some phenomenal leftovers from last night’s dinner out waiting for me, that is really, really saying something — because as excellent as my rice vermicelli with grilled pork is, it is not a box of fried cheese doughnuts. Whomp, whomp.

Food website Chew Boom seems to be the one responsible for bringing this little tidbit to the English-speaking internet’s attention; their write-up of the item is brief, but includes all the necessary information: The doughnuts are made of “a ring of real Camembert cheese breaded up and deep-fried until crispy and golden on the outside,” creating something that’s kind of like “mozzarella cheese sticks in the shape of a ring doughnut, but with Camembert cheese on the inside.” (In case you’re not familiar with Camembert, it’s a creamy, French cheese that bears some resemblance to Brie. It is delicious, and I encourage you to consume some at your soonest possible convenience.)

This Twitter user definitely has the right idea.

Anyway, the doughnuts, which the Google Translate version of the McDonald’s Germany website describes as “crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside” and “tender-melting” (whatever that means), come in boxes of four or seven with a cranberry dipping sauce served on the side. The website also calls them “perfect for sharing,” but, uh… they’ve clearly never met me. If I had a box of these things, I would definitely be planning on eating all seven of them myself. Get your own box, McD’s copyeditor. They’re only 3,99 euros a box (around $4.90).

The item appears to be pretty new, so there aren’t that many reviews of it floating around; some can be found if you look hard enough, though. Delish and a few other sites dug up one German-language YouTube video from the channel JunkFoodGuru that seems to imply they’re pretty good:

For what it’s worth, you can set YouTube to auto-translate this video; the automatically generated translation is more than a little nonsensical, though, so you may or may not find it helpful to do so. However, auto-translate might not be necessary — it’s pretty easy to read the JunkFoodGuru’s reaction, particularly when he adds the cranberry dipping sauce to the mix. As Mike Pomranz at Extra Crispy noted, in “the universal language of food video grunts… this guy seems really pleased with his cheesy doughnut experience.”

I also found an older review of a similar menu item by GermanFoodReviews, who is an English-speaking German YouTuber. Apparently McDonald’s offered something called Mini Baked Camemberts with cranberry dipping sauce back in 2015; they’re not doughnut-shaped — they’re more like disc-shaped nuggets — but my sense is that they’re more or less the same thing.

According to this review, the cranberry dipping sauce can kind of overwhelm the Camembert — but then again, judging by the satisfied yummy noises he makes while he’s eating the cranberry-dipped cheese nuggets, that’s not necessarily a bad thing (and, to be fair, Camembert is a pretty mild cheese to begin with). He does note that he prefers them without the sauce; either way, though, they sound pretty tasty.

In closing, I would like to take a moment to note how delightfully Google Translate handles the McDonald’s Germany website:

“And Therefore, An Espresso!” beats the pants off “But First, Coffee” any day of the week. (And don’t even get me started on “HUNGER GET?”)

Are you in Germany? Can you get your hands on some Camembert Donuts? If the answer to both those questions is yes, go test them out and report back so I can live vicariously through you. Please and thank you!