Polish Jews, who called it a ponchki, fried the doughnut in schmaltz rather than lard due to kashrut laws.

The ponchik was brought to Israel by Polish Jewish immigrants, where it was renamed the sufganiyah based on the Talmud's description of a "spongy dough".

The "Gefüllte Krapfen" consisted of "a bit of jam sandwiched between two rounds of yeast bread dough and deep-fried in lard".

[7] Among Polish Jews, the jelly doughnut was fried in oil or schmaltz rather than lard, due to kashrut laws.

[7] The ponchik-style sufganiyah was originally made from two circles of dough surrounding a jelly filling, stuck together and fried in one piece.

[8] Although this method is still practiced, an easier technique commonly used today is to deep-fry whole balls of dough, and then inject them with a filling through a baker's syringe (or a special industrial machine).

[2] Modern-day sufganiyot in Israel are made from sweet yeast dough, filled with plain red jelly (usually strawberry,[9] sometimes raspberry), and topped with powdered sugar.

Fancier versions are stuffed with dulce de leche, chocolate cream, vanilla cream, cappuccino,[10] halva, creme espresso, chocolate truffle,[7] or araq, and topped with various extravagant toppings, from coconut shavings and tiny vials of liquor to meringue and fruit pastes.

[12] In 2016, Israeli bakeries began downsizing sufganiyot to appeal to health-conscious consumers, following an anti-junk food campaign by Health Minister Yaakov Litzman.

In 2018, The Jerusalem Post reported on a new trend of savory sufganiyot in Manhattan eateries, in which the dough is filled with chicken schnitzel, lamb bacon, liver, or pastrami.