Welcome to Al Dente! Where normally I talk about things I’ve made and then eaten. This time round, though, things are a little different. This time round we’re doing a product review. An in depth take down we choose to call…
DOUGHNUT OR FAUXNUT?
Right then, I love doughnuts. Not the powdered sugar, fried to a crisp sort that most UK bakers do. Those have their place but that place is not in my tummy, thanks. That’s for two reasons;
1)My Mutant ability is to fire jam down myself the moment I bite into one of those things. This is clearly why the X-Men don’t return my calls. Either that or the mansion’s blown up. AGAIN.
2)They are so sugary and so relentlessly, belligerently crammed full of sweetness that it’s a little like being punched in the teeth by the Easter Bunny that one year he went ‘Y’know what? SCREW ‘EM. ALL THIS CHOCOLATE IS MINE.’
No, I tend to favor Krispy Kreme’s approach. The dough is bready, soft and not usually made entirely of sugar, the filling (Or indeed’nut’) tends to be pretty on point and eating one isn’t like shoving your face in a bucket of sugary mud. So a couple of times a month, Sunday breakfast will be 2 pots of coffee, 1.5 doughnuts and something protein-y. It’s a good system. The 3 that, De La Soul aside, are the magic number for us tend to be; Apple Pie, Reese’s Peanut Butter and Biscoff.
But we’re enlightened 21st century people and we’re always up for new stuff so when Krispy Kreme announced Cookie Dough and Brownie Batter flavor doughnuts, we figured what the Hell. New minds, fresh ideas, and cookie INSIDE doughnut. The last time food science went that way, Turducken happened!
So, a couple of weeks ago, we tried these out:
Cookie Dough(nut)! See his Bakewell tart esque exterior! Gaze in awe upon the machine tooled precision of his chocolate chips!
Brownie Batter Doughnut! Actual brownie pieces! Actual chocolate!
How can these guys fail? They look great, they clearly are made of love and rainbows and there is BROWNIE and COOKIE inside DOUGHNUT(s). This is the Saturn V of cake, the Colossus of Rhodes of bread product! Forward to glory! Forward to honor! Forward to delicious hybridized confectionery designed only for joy!
Or maybe not.
In defence of my edible subjects I should point out I managed to cut both at right angles to the filling containment area or ‘gunk cave’ so it looks like there isn’t much. There really was, especially in the Brownie Batter doughnut. Also it should be pointed out that the Brownie Batter doughnut has actual chocolate tempered to an actual degree that it breaks and snaps off in plates when you cut it. That’s really good and tasted great. See also the airy structure of the doughnut.
The filling? Not so much. There’s lots of it but that’s not a good thing in this instance. It’s sugary but very grainy, and doesn’t have any of the consistency or depth of texture you’d want brownie batter to have. It does, in fact, taste an awful lot like chocolate cream that was introduced to brownie batter at a party, got on really well with it and wrote down it’s twitter account wrong. Or, more disturbingly, chocolate cream in the process of stalking brownie batter. Stealing it’s job, it’s friends and soon…SOON….it’s sugary life.
Anyway, onwards!
To, well…yeah…
Neither of these doughnuts are very good. This is the worst of the two. The structure’s great but the little cookies on top are flat and dusty and the filling doesn’t even try and impersonate cookie dough. There’s none of it’s texture or density, none of that great kind of feathered taste you get with fresh cookie dough. In fact, there’s pretty clearly no actual dough. The brownie batter doughnut clearly once met brownie batter. The cookie dough one did a quick google image search on it’s way out the door and hoped for the best. Instead, you get standard issue Krispy Kreme Goo, just flavored in a way that’s meant to evoke cookies but instead tastes like margarine heavy cheesecake.
So it’s fauxnuts all the way down. Or to put it another way the apple pie, biscoff and peanut butter trifecta lives to fight another day. And by ‘fight’ I mean ‘get eaten’.
What’s It Like?
Not cookie dough or brownie batter that’s for sure.
What’s It Good With?
The other doughnuts, on the shelf.
First product review complete! Next time, actual food I actually cooked! See you then.