Hot jam donuts

Hot jam donuts are Melbourne's doughnut: a yeasted ball fried to order, injected with raspberry or strawberry jam while still too hot to hold, rolled in sugar and handed over in a paper bag that goes translucent with oil within a minute. The reference point is the American Doughnut Kitchen, the white van that has parked outside the Queen Victoria Market since 1950 and still sells half a dozen at a time through a hatch, and the form has spread to vans at football grounds, country shows and markets across Victoria. The dish is the same cinnamon-sugar jam doughnut found in Germany as a Berliner and in Poland as a pączek, brought by post-war European migrants, but the Melbourne habit of eating it within seconds of frying, standing up, and burning the roof of the mouth on the jam is what makes it a local institution rather than a bakery item.