The square fried pastry, closely related to doughnuts, that is a famous specialty of New Orleans is the beignet.
Beignets are made from yeast-leavened dough, cut into squares, deep-fried, and generously covered with powdered sugar. Unlike ring doughnuts, they are typically solid and often puff into a hollow center while frying.
The pastry is strongly associated with New Orleans, where it became especially popular through French-style cooking traditions. Café du Monde, founded in the French Market in 1862, is one of the city's best-known places for serving beignets with coffee or café au lait.
Beignets are sometimes described simply as New Orleans doughnuts, but the terms are not interchangeable. Doughnuts commonly include rings, filled pastries, or chemically leavened varieties, while the classic New Orleans beignet has a square shape and a powdered-sugar topping. Related fried dough pastries also appear in French and other European cuisines, but New Orleans made this particular form internationally recognizable.