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Darien church's monthly fundraiser delivers good taste

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Doughnut day in Darien

Parishioners at the United Methodist Church in Darien, Wis., gather once a month to make homemade doughnuts as a fundraisers for the church. STORY Click to play

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Darien's doughnut day

Once a month members of Darien's United Methodist Church gather to make, bag and sell hundreds of dozens of doughnuts. Proceeds help support church programs.

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John Jacobs works the fryer, easing the hot cake doughnuts out of the oil as soon as they're crispy outside. Thirty at a time cook in the hot fat before being brought up to cool. Terry Mayer/staff.

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DARIEN -- The aroma of fresh bakery wafts out of the church’s windows, rolls up the stairs and out onto the street.

If you’re driving down County Highway X or Wisconsin Highway 14 and roll your windows down a bit, you’ll be drawn to the doughnuts as sure as a moth to a flame. You have no choice. The tantalizing aroma is heavenly.

“It’s kind of like Disneyland. We pipe it outside,” Ken Markley said with a laugh.

Markley has been the pastor at the Darien United Methodist Church for the past eight months. He jokes that the doughnuts might have been the deciding factor in taking the job.

The crew will be at it again March 18, 2010.

Nine months out of the year, the church members come together to make doughnuts.

It’s been over 30 years since the doughnut-making began in earnest.

Originally, a few ladies had taken to making doughnuts during the Darien Corn Fest, held every fall at the nearby park.

“They were rolling them out by hand and frying them up,” Schellhase.

Then the minister’s wife heard about a bakery going out of business.

“We bought the fryer and have been making the doughnuts every since,” Schelhase said.

Read the full story in the Feb. 11, 2010 e-edition of Weekender HERE.