NYC's Most Unusual Doughnuts
The city's most unusual donuts go beyond Boston cream and honey dip. In some cases, they even go beyond round. But no matter how wild or wacky, the donuts described below share one common characteristic: they're all utterly yummy. By Jessica Allen.
A Cronut is to a donut as a tiger or lion is to a liger: a very wonderful hybrid. Almost a year after pastry chef Dominique Ansel introduced his Cronut to the world, the breakfast treat/dessert shows no sign of diminishing in popularity, not even when his eponymous bakery is also selling all-in-one chocolate chip cookie-and-milk shots or traditional French pastries, not even when the line stretches around the block.
Made by the talented pastry chefs at nearby Dough, Do or Dine's foie gras doughnut is as decadent as it sounds. Imagine a jam-filled donut, but replace the jam with candy-like foie gras. But how does it eat? Like the ultimate sweet-savory starter. The whimsical menu at this Bed-Stuy restaurant has such other dishes as "fawn-tons" made with jarlsberg and venison and "you've got quail" with consomme and polenta.
In 2013, Navy vet Corey Cova opened Dough Loco, a bakery in East Harlem specializing in, as you'd get from the name, kind of crazy creations. Among his most popular are the spicy raspberry Sriracha, smooth pineapple-brown butter, and the mild maple miso, with a sugary umami bite. He makes them one small batch at a time, so check Facebook or Twitter to see whether he's run out (he often does by late afternoon).
The first time we tried a bite of Dun-Well's root beer doughnut, we called it a bit of "sarsaparilla heaven." Somehow this pastry—this carb-heavy, golden pastry—tasted exactly like a long slow swallow of root beer. If you don't go in for soda, you can get one of the many, many other mad flavors made at this vegan bakery in East Williamsburg, including Cadbury cream egg, chai tea, sweet potato pie, black licorice, and candy bar.
Two things stand out about the offerings at the Doughnut Plant: the shape, and the flavor. You can't talk about one without the other, so here's a sampling of some of what we've gobbled over the years: a marzipan star, a gingerbread circle covered with candied ginger, a triple chocolate mint round, a peanut butter and blackberry jam square, and a coconut-cream filled square. Everything is freshly made, intensely flavored, and begging to be gobbled.