City Hall Farmers' Market Apple Cider Donut

Location: City Hall Farmers' Market, Chambers and Broadway, Orchards of Concklin booth

Schedule: Every Friday morning until December 19; click here for other Orchards of Concklin locations

My order: Bag of 6 donuts, 10 oz. bottle of apple cider

Cost: $3.25

This one was a big shrug. I'd heard very good things about the Orchards of Concklin's donuts, so I arrived at the corner of Chambers and Broadway this morning with unrealistically high expectations. I was hoping to see a sunny, bustling market full of ruddy, apple-cheeked folk snapping open paper bags beside table after table groaning under the weight of photogenic produce. And I was sure the apple cider donuts were going to be fried on the spot in a rustic kettle by a round, jovial man in bib overalls with a wise twinkle in his eye.

Not to be.

The market consisted of five flimsy tents huddled together at the corner of Chambers and Broadway in near-freezing weather. The canvas flaps shivered in the wind. The jovial farmers and consumers full of innocence and wonder were not to be found. Instead, a few commuters wrapped in scarves hurriedly picked out apples, saran-wrapped danishes, and kosher honey while very stoic hourly workers stood by the cash registers and blew into their freezing hands.

The donuts were just OK. They were not made on the spot, but instead sold on a shelf in plastic bags. Six donuts for $2.25 is a real bargain, though, and the dusting of cinnamon (and possibly a bit of brown sugar) was expertly applied -- not too much and not too little. Because of the chilly temperature -- and also because of the time lag between the donut's birth and my consumption of it -- the donut cake did not have quite enough give. The apple cider was refreshing and sweet, with a very straightforward taste. It was more like very good apple juice than very good cider. You couldn't taste the land.

I met up with a friend on her way to work and we retreated to a nearby Starbucks for a coffee. The plan was to give the apple cider donuts another try in a heated environment. But our hearts just weren't in it. In the end, my friend took the four leftover donuts to her office for her colleagues to scavenge. That's not much of a tribute.

I'm afraid I really dropped the ball on farmers' market donuts this season. It's just too cold to enjoy them properly and a lot of markets are shutting down now. Maybe next year?

Because We Love Online Quizzes

Today's cool thing is Typealyzer, a tool that generates psychological profiles of bloggers. All you do is enter the blog's URL and the typealyzer algorithm spits out a description of its author.

According to Typealyzer, my profile is "ESFP," also known as "The Performer."

"The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

"They enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions."

Well, I don't know about the soft fabrics and bright colors. Also, the illustration of "The Entertainer" is not quite accurate. I never wear knee-high boots. But, I have to agree that NYC Donut Report!! is certainly all about pleasure and beauty and sweet smells.

What Donut Are You?

Finally! A psychological test that correlates personality types with donut types. I dare you to take the quiz! Click here!

According to the quiz, I am a Boston creme:

You have a tough exterior. No one wants to mess with you.
But on the inside, you're a total pushover and completely soft.
You're a traditionalist, and you don't change easily.
You're likely to eat the same doughnut every morning, and pout if it's sold out.

Although I would not put Boston creme in my top tier of donuts, the psychological profile is not far off, especially the part about pouting.

By the way, now that we know John McCain prefers sprinkles, I tinkered around with the quiz until I found this profile for the "sprinkled donut" personality type. I'm not sure this totally matches the image I had of McCain. What do you guys think?

Flamboyant and flashy, you're easily distracted by shiny things.
You're definitely a snazzy number, and you usually catch everyone's eye in the room.
And you've got the goods to back up your colorful image.
(Though too much of you gives people a stomachache!)

What kind of donut are you? Feel free to share your results in the comments.

Breaking: Furbys Are Real!!

As longtime readers know, here at NYC Donut Report!! we're committed to bringing articles of interest to your attention because good reading -- ideally a nice, smudgy article in a physical newspaper -- is an essential component of the donut lifestyle.

Well, to that end, unless you've been living under a rock you may have noticed that the Internet has been blowing up the last 24 hours over the discovery that Furbys are real and live deep in the forests of Indonesia.

Furbies, those annoying furry robots that were all the rage in the late nineties, are back. But this time they’re alive. In the past few months, scientists have captured three live Furby lookalikes—called pygmy tarsiers (Tarsius pumilus)—in Indonesian forests. Pygmy tarsiers are tiny nocturnal primates, less than four inches long, with giant eyes and long thin fingers tipped with claws.

Until now, the gremlin-like creatures were almost mystical. The last time a pygmy tarsier was found alive was in 1930. Many scientists were convinced that the species was extinct until Indonesian scientists found one dead in a mouse trap in 2000. Determined to track down the mysterious species, a team of primatologists set up 276 mist nets in the mountains of Indonesia. They captured three, two males and one female, and fitted them with radio collars.

The forests in Indonesia and other places are full of creatures that few have ever seen, and I hope people will keep that in mind and preserve places like this.

I was going to make a crack about how we thought the toy Furby was real and the animal was extinct but it turned out to be the other way around. But no! In fact, man-made Furbys are still going strong. There is a new generation of Furbys whose owners

seek to integrate aspects of the Furby experience into human society. The most visible of these groups include Furbish-to-English translators. . .

And apparently there are sick people roaming free on the streets called "circuit benders" who like to hack into Furbys and mess with their brains. There are tons of videos showing this. But I have to warn you that if you have any emotional connection to the Furby at all -- and you probably do, whether you realize it or not -- these videos will literally sicken you. Think twice before clicking.

Until the next NYC Donut Report!!

Courage!!

Zeitgeist Watch!!

Original Donut Homie Wendy alerted me to this important cultural shift. It happened on TV, so it's not just real. It's more real than real!!

because i know sometimes it's hard to find tidbits for your blog...

in this episode of 30 rock, alec baldwin makes an important donut pronouncement at about 1 minute 43 seconds in...

http://www.hulu.com/watch/44306/30-rock-the-one-with-the-cast-from-night-court

that's all!

Here's the precise moment she's talking about:



For those of you forbidden to stream video, Alec Baldwin says:

We're using credit cards in cabs now, all the galleries have moved to Chelsea, and we're off cupcakes and we're back to donuts.

Change is coming, people!!
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Who Makes NYC's Best Apple Cider Donut??

(Photo swiped from Flickr user asacco9642)

I am now accepting nominations for NYC's best apple cider donut. If you know of a good one, please make your pitch for it in the comments.

Although you are free to name a mass-produced apple cider donut if you've had a really good one, I'm really more interested in the ones you can get at farmers' markets. I've heard good things about the donuts at the Lincoln Center market and the ones by Orchards of Concklin. Less good things have been said about the apple cider donuts at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn.

Agree? Disagree? Others? Make your voice heard!!

Enrico's Pastry Shop & Café, Morris Park Ave. between Hone and Lurting Aves., the Bronx

Location: 1057 Morris Park Avenue

Subway: 5 to Morris Park, followed by a 10 minute walk (see map). Getting here is not easy and getting back is even harder; more on this below.

Neighborhood: Morris Park, a working-class neighborhood whose residents are apparently required by law to pave over their small, cramped lawns with concrete, ring them with menacing iron gates, and then festoon the property with plastic ghosts and jack-o'-lanterns, cardboard turkeys, inflatable snowmen, Irish and Italian flags, plastic garlands of ersatz fall leaves, soiled whimsical scarecrows, horse-and-buggy plaques, Hannah Montana posters, fake roses, and "Beware of Dog" signs.

My order: Chocolate-frosted cruller, black-and-white custard-filled donut, plain glazed, small coffee.

Cost: $3.85

I have to confess. Until today, I had never intentionally set foot in the Bronx, although I did end up there once by accident, in 1998, after falling asleep on the 2 train. And that is a shame because the Bronx is so central to American history and culture. Hip-hop was invented there. The "Bronx cheer" was born there. The Archie comic books were set there, in Riverdale. Babe Ruth caroused with prostitutes there and hit home runs there that he'd promised to gravely ill children. And whatever the Grand Concourse is -- and whatever it is that people do there -- all that, too, is there.

What was I thinking? I mean, people! Did you realize Edgar Allan Poe wrote "Annabel Lee" while living out the last years of his tragic, penniless life in the Bronx?

Anyway, today I atoned. Thanks to the MTA's jumbled weekend service, I had to take three different trains to get to the Morris Park station, but I managed. And after a brisk walk past innumerable tin awnings and Catholic grade schools, I found myself at Enrico's, a shop that offers not only donuts but also Italian cakes and pastries, elaborate cookies and tarts, a forlorn-looking pyramid of cupcakes studded with M&M's, and many many cannolis.

Enrico's is staffed by a gaggle of cheerfully insolent teenage girls who seem only intermittently aware that they are working at a place of business. My coffee order temporarily vanished into an ether of giggles and conspiratorial whispers. When I asked for extra napkins, the ringleader of the girls -- apparently known to the regular customers as "the cheerleader" -- tried to charge me a penny a napkin.

"You're kidding," I said.

"Don't mess with the cheerleader," cackled a weatherbeaten man in his late 40s who leaned against a wall in the corner, sipping from a paper cup and eyeing the girls closely.

Later, another customer came in -- also a crinkled white man in late middle age -- and engaged the girls in some mildly creepy sass. "Who's your favorite customer?" he asked them. "C'mon, aren't I your favorite customer?"

"You're all our favorite customers," replied the napkin gouger. "Well, except some of you aren't."

"Do not mess with the cheerleader," repeated the man in the corner.

However, I should also say that the girls let me use their bathroom in the back. Enrico's gets many bonus points for that. And after I used the bathroom I took a peek at the surprisingly large baking and frying operation going on in the back room where men in white aprons and white paper hats toiled in a cloud of flour. It's a nearly 24-hour operation back there, I was told.

As for the donuts, they are pretty good. If you can only eat one donut from Enrico's, it absolutely has to be their custard filled. I don't know why more people don't fill their donuts with custard. The weight and texture of the vanilla custard filling went very well with the light, fresh donut surrounding it. On the other hand, the black and white frosting was probably excessive. It was no different than cake frosting, which is great for a cake but not so great for a light, pillowy donut.



Sadly, Enrico's committed the same sin with the frosted cruller pictured at the top of this post. Crullers are all about lightness and airiness. In fact, the sign of a truly great cruller is that, when you bite into it, it somehow seems lighter than is physically possible. Whether the crullers at Enrico's meet that standard is impossible to know because they are loaded down with cake frosting. It truly is a sin, a senseless act of transgression and destruction, like dipping cotton candy in nacho cheese.

After that sour note, I was relieved to enjoy a very good, very light, very fresh plain glazed. It was the perfect finish after the heaviness of the earlier donuts.



And with that, the visit was over, and I was back on the Morris Park platform. The 5 train back to Manhattan was nowhere to be found. A handful of glum people sat on benches with their chins in their hands, as though they'd been there for a long time. It was only one o'clock in the afternoon but the station was crepuscular and desolate, as if trying to warn us that the wait would not be short.



Eventually a train approached, but passed without stopping. Then the garbage train inched by. If you've never waited on a NYC platform when that yellow and black garbage train painstakingly grinds and wheezes along the track -- which means that the next passenger train will not be arriving for a very long time -- you have never experienced true hopelessness.

At this point, an elderly woman in wraparound sunglasses began dragging a nylon plaid laundry bag up and down the platform, ranting to no one in particular about the poor subway service. "This is the most disgusting train I've ever had to ride," she said. "What a horrible line! I used to live in Parkchester, that was much better. Horrible!"

When this failed to get a response from anyone, she stomped down the platform, squinting at each passenger one by one. "Look at you all!" she said. "You just sit there! Don't say a word! Don't complain! You sons a' bitches."

She scraped her nylon bag over the concrete. "Well, guess what?" she said. "I'm going to City Hall tomorrow. I'm going to complain! Straight to the mayor!"

Another 5 train, an express train, zoomed past the platform without stopping. The old woman frowned.

"But he's a shithead, too," she said, "that Bloomberg."

Eventually a local 5 train did stop, and we all got on silently. I can't remember where the old woman got off. It was a long journey to the Bronx, but I'm still glad I made it, and I hope it's not my last visit there.

And finally, if you're thinking of making the trip up to Morris Park, you should also check out this report from Cakespy. (Thanks also to Rachel from Cupcakes Take the Cake for mentioning this to me.)

I Empower You to Make Pumpkin Pie!!

After yesterday's Dunkin' Donuts Pumpkin Donut, which ought to be renamed The Portable Pumpkin Pie!!™, I really wanted an actual, "off-line," non-portable pumpkin pie. So, duh, I made one at home. Why hadn't I thought of that before?

If you're like me, you've probably always assumed that people who make their own pies are either unbearable culinary show-offs, obsessive-compulsive types, or great-grandmothers. But actually, none of that can possibly be true now that I've made the pie pictured above.

However, I have learned there is a centuries-old conspiracy meant to trick you into thinking that pies are too hard to make yourself. Well, maybe they are too hard if you're rolling out your own crust from scratch and, like, scooping the brains out your own pumpkins that you've grown in a hydroponic pumpkin patch you set up in your roommate's closet. But if you're a healthy, relatively sane person starting from a frozen crust and canned pumpkin, making a pie is no harder than making pancakes. It's also plenty cheap: the total cost of my pie was $4.64, not counting a $3.17 investment in spices.

Speaking of which, first, you must get this:



It's really important to get the McCormick brand, which luckily is really the only brand of spice you'll ever find in any supermarket, because it has the recipe on the label:

Mix 1 can (15 oz.) pumpkin, 1 can (14 oz.) sweetend condensed milk, 2 eggs, and 1 tbsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice. Pour into 1 frozen unbaked pie crust. Bake in preheated 425°F oven 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F; bake 40 minutes longer. Cool completely.

So first you turn on the oven to 425°. Then, following the recipe, you get a big bowl (bigger than you think you'll need), and add the contents of this. . .



. . . and this . . .



. . . and then add the 2 eggs and the tablespoon of pumpkin pie spice. Then mix it all together with a big spoon. You don't need a blender or mixer, which is good since we both know you don't have one.

By now the oven's hot enough and you can carefully pour the mixture into a frozen pie crust like this one:



And OK, this is important: Get a 9 inch DEEP DISH frozen pie crust. "Deep dish" is not a figure of speech; it's actually deeper so that it can actually hold all the pumpkin pie mixture. Also, we are talking about the frozen crusts you find in the grocery store freezer. Not the ones made of pulverized graham crackers in the cookie aisle. And make sure the crust is still actually frozen when you put it in the oven. Don't outsmart yourself and try to defrost it first or something.

So then all you need to do is put the pie in the center rack of the oven and remember to turn the temperature down to 350° after 15 minutes. Forty minutes after that you take the pie out of the oven and let it cool completely. My donut homie Wendy Molyneux has pointed out in her book that you should never, ever set your pie on a windowsill to cool because a cartoon character will immediately steal it.

But, seriously, you really do have to let it cool completely. This means for like an hour or more. This isn't just some legal liability thing written in by the McCormick spice company's in-house counsel. While it is "cooling," what's actually happening is that the pie filling is congealing. If you cut into it too soon, your slice of pie will fall apart. And you will be sad and cry.

So that's it!! You did it!!

If any of you actually make pies based on this post, please e-mail a photo of your pie to NYCDonutReport (at) gmail (dot) com and I promise I will post them all on this Web site. If enough people send in their pies, there may even be a prize.
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Dunkin' Donuts Pumpkin Donut

Location: Any Dunkin' Donuts this fall. In my case, Fulton St. and Jay St. in Downtown Brooklyn

My order: Pumpkin donut and coffee

Cost: A mere $2.87

It may not be much to look at, but this is the donut of the season. You may not find it at the first Dunkin' Donuts you enter, but don't give up. Keep looking. There's a reason why these are selling out all over the city -- and indeed all over the USA.

This is really a beautifully conceived and executed donut. It seems to be a little more deeply fried than the typical donut, which gives it a nice crunchy crust. It's almost like a pie crust, or at least it will remind you of that. And the crust gives way to very moist, flavorful innards with a strong hint of cinnamon or nutmeg.

In short, it's like a portable slice of pie!!

The pumpkin donut is to pumpkin pie what the iPod is to LPs!!

Why not a portable pie? Now you can take your pie with you. And now you can dunk your pie in your coffee. It makes me wonder what other foods could be made portable if we just put our minds to it. Portable soup? Portable spaghetti and meatballs? Portable tutti-frutti waffles? Portable fondue? Portable flambé? Portable whole suckling pig?

Also, I think I'm finally starting to understand the appeal of Dunkin' Donuts coffee. It's like coffee cart coffee. You must order it with half and half and at least one sugar, just like you would at a coffee cart. Then you get a sweet, round, straightforward, no-messing-around taste. I still prefer the coffee I make at home with Italian roast beans from Sahadi's (a steal at $4.99/lb). But this Dunkin' Donuts stuff isn't bad if you insist on the half-and-half and lots of sugar.

While the Rest of You Suckers Were Toiling at Your Desks, I Was Learning about Chile!!

When I take a step back and think of the glamorous life I lead as a jet-setting, high-flying, scoop-nabbing International Donut Reporter, it's amazing to me that I am so frequently depressed.

To wit:



Yes, people, this is a photo of four (4!!) glasses of wine, each more delicious than the next, that were set before me at yesterday afternoon's Flavors of Chile event that was put on by a group called Pro Chile and which I was smuggled into by official Donut Homie Alison Rosen.

And although those little plastic receptacles in the photo might look, at first glance, like specimen cups left behind by alarmingly ill hospital patients, they in fact contain a variety of delicious oils of Chile. The cup second from left contains avocado oil -- admit it, you didn't even know such a thing even existed -- and is delicious as can be. It appeared in one of the dishes we had, a Patagonian crab salad on a bed of avocado mousse. Did you know that Patagonian crab is sweeter and more tender than any other kind of crab because they are found in the pure and chilly waters off the coast of Antarctica?



Alison's blog has all the details on the astounding facts we learned and the barrage of quips and bon mots unleashed by our host for the afternoon, a dapper, pink man in a dapper, pink necktie who I think is a famous food critic but whose name neither Alison nor I can recall.

But just to add to Alison's account, here's the deal with Chile:

First, the produce there is the most pure and innocent in the world because Chile is so isolated from the rest of the world. No hoof-in-mouth disease, no vineyard blight, and presumably the lambs of Chile are even more naive and trusting than regular lambs.



Second, there's something in Chile called the ulmo tree that produces some amazing fruit. Check out the yellow item in the picture below. At first glance it may appear that someone held down a life-sized gummy bear and cut out its tongue*. But in fact this is a slice of ulmo. The taste is hard to describe, but it's as though someone crossed a pear with a gummy bear** and then jammed a syringe full of honey into it. (In fact, you actually can get honey from the ulmo tree.)



There were tons of other food bloggers at the event. I thought I recognized some people from the Electrolux turkey party last month but I'm not sure. We also met some very nice chefs and food suppliers and actual print journalists. I kept waiting for a platter of indigenous Chilean donuts to come out, but despite the lack of fried dough products, it was a delightful afternoon.

* = I apologize in advance to the gummy bear community for this remark. No actual gummy bears were harmed in the preparation of this lunch.

** = Sorry again, gummy bears!!

Maharaja Sweets & Snacks, 73-10 37th Avenue, Jackson Heights, Queens

Consider this the first of at least two installments. I was supposed to meet up with a Jackson Heights expert who wanted to show me some truly amazing donut-like treats in various sweet shops around the Indian section of the neighborhood. Unfortunately, due to my inability to read e-mails properly, I ended up in Jackson Heights on the wrong day and was left to my own devices.

(By the way, if you've never been to this part of the city, you should jump on the 7 train and convey yourself to the 74 St-Broadway stop at once. This place is one of the true treasures of New York City and I will be writing much more about it soon. If you have a whole Sunday to spare, I highly recommend you have lunch at the Jackson Diner and then head around the corner for a song-and-dance Bollywood movie spectacular at the Eagle Theater. Also -- and now I am really digressing -- Jackson Heights was one of the first places I visited when I first came to the city years and years ago, for a job interview of all things, and when I got off the subway I was approached by a disoriented elderly woman who was wandering through the bustling international crowd and offering people wads of actual American cash from a brown paper bag.)

Anyway, I found myself inside Maharaja Sweets, a riotous place full of women in saris and other traditional garb ordering sweets by the pound in a mashup of English, Hindi and untold other Indian regional dialects. Communication was a delightfully frustrating challenge here.

In the end, I came away with three morsels pictured above: the coconut jaman way in the back, the malai sandwich in the middle and, front and center, the sublime pink chum chum.

The only way to describe the pink chum chum is to say: a) it actually tasted "pink," and b) it was literally gushing with sweetness. Whether the pink chum chum can properly be called a donut will have to be the subject of an academic symposium at a later date. But there is no debate about its deliciousness.

Keep watching this space for much, much more on Jackson Heights.

If You Really Loved Me, You'd Buy Me an Electrolux Oven with a Perfect Turkey Button™

+ =

Consider yourselves all put on notice. For reals. I need this appliance delivered and installed in my home (or possibly my girlfriend's parents' home) by Thanksgiving. The 30" single wall oven is only $2,199, so I don't see why you all can't pool your resources and make this happen.

I know what you're thinking: "But why, Duane -- if that's even your real name? Why in the world would anyone so desperately need an oven with a Perfect Turkey Button™?"

Well, people, that's a very silly question. It's like asking, "Why would anyone want to cure pediatric cancer?" or "Why would anyone want to experience pure bliss?" or "Why would anyone want to go to Heaven after they die?"

Simply put, the Electrolux Perfect Turkey Button™ lets you take a turkey, jam a high-tech probe into its leg, press a single button, close the door, and hours later take out a moist, buttery, exquisitely roasted bird. This means your Thanksgiving will not be ruined until after dinner is served.

We are now truly living in the best of all possible worlds. And I have to thank the cool people at Foodbuzz who let me and other food bloggers witness this miracle in action in a very classy Midtown locale with an open bar where we feasted on delicious turkey sliders, mushroom risotto, crème brûlée served in individual miniature pumpkins and so much more.

I also got to meet Rachel, Nichelle and Allison from Cupcakes Take the Cake, the blog where you can learn all you need to know about the cupcake craze currently ravaging our land like the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918. And although I've always thought of cupcakes and donuts as mortal enemies, these women were so friendly that we actually experienced a rare evening of donut-cupcake détente. Keep watching this space for more information on a very cool donut-cupcake event we're hoping to put together soon.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on that oven. And even if we can't all have the oven, let's at least agree to form a punk band called "Perfect Turkey Button."

Until the next NYC Donut Report!!

Courage!!

11/11 Is Pepero Day!!

Wishing a very happy Pepero Day to all my readers in Korea. And to all my peeps inside the Lotte mega-conglomerate, makers of Pepero.

For the rest of us, today is Veterans Day. It is sad how many people continue to die and suffer horrible injuries in wars undertaken solely for greed, vanity, blind nationalism and for sport. Here's hoping for a future that isn't haunted by war. I hope the time will come when we can all just celebrate Pepero Day.

Although not a donut, Pepero is a delicious chocolate-coated cookie stick and is therefore a beloved cousin of the donut. Good luck finding Pepero here in the US, but its Japanese equivalent, Pocky (pronounced "pokey") is readily available in Asian markets all over NYC. Pocky comes in a variety of wonderful flavors, including Strawberry Pocky, Caramel Pocky, Almond Pocky, Pocky White Mousse and everyone's favorite, Men's Pocky.

Coffee War or Culture War??

By now you've probably seen the Dunkin' Donuts ads boasting that their coffee beat Starbucks in a double-blind taste test. The press release is here. There's even a DD Web site dedicated to it, dunkinbeatstarbucks.com, which is worth checking out because it contains coupons. And here at NYC Donut Report!! we love coupons.

According to the press release, the 476 taste testers chose between Dunkin' Donuts Original Blend (is there any other kind of blend?) and Starbucks House Blend, both served black, and the verdict was 54.2% DD, 39.3% Starbucks, and 6.3% no preference. They don't state a margin of error for this poll, but we know from weeks of obsessive poll-watching that 476 is a small sample size for a nationwide survey. That 15 point spread is huge, though. Also no word on whether there is a "Starbucks Effect" or "Shy Dunkin' Effect" at play in this taste test, in which tasters who state "no preference" in fact prefer Dunkin' Donuts but choose not to admit it.

I don't know if Starbucks House Blend is the same as their new Pike Place blend, but if so that would explain a lot. Pike Place blend is terrible, and I stand by my review of it from this spring: "scalding hot laundry water with a splash of urine." Interestingly enough, the Pike Place blend is actually meant to compete for customers who prefer the coffee at Dunkin'. Guess they fell short.

Not that the Dunkin' Donuts coffee is anything special. I've never understood the fascination with it. I really do think there are cultural factors at play here. Starbucks coffee is "European," "fussy," "metrosexual," "elitist," "effete" and so forth. And Dunkin' Donuts coffee is for hard-workin' Joe Sixpacks who need a morning jolt before they rumble off in their battle-scarred pickup trucks to go rivet girders and bellow into push-to-talk cell phones and holler "Nice tits!!" while straddling an I-beam 50 stories up in the air in some perpetually overcast corner of Baltimore.

And I suspect that Dunkin' Donuts is also happily, even gleefully, willing to exploit these cultural divides. Here's a choice bit from that press release [emphasis mine]:

Beginning on national television today, a new spot will depict vignettes of hard-working Americans who have taken a blind taste test during their busy daily routines. A poll-taker seeks their vote and makes a checkmark on a clipboard to illustrate the results.

So a few final thoughts here:

1. My congratulations to Dunkin' Donuts, but can I please have my coffee without a spalsh of culture war?

2. Why was the coffee in the taste test served black? Who would drink either DD or Pike Place black? I'm wincing just thinking about it.

3. Are we going to follow this up with a Starbucks vs. Dunkin' Donuts double-blind donut taste test? I would be very curious to see the results of that. The DD cruller is an exceptional donut, but the DD chocolate glazed (which consistently has a weird aftertaste of toothpaste) is demonstrably inferior to the new Starbucks chocolate glazed (aka the Starbucks Top Pot Chocolate Glazed Reason to Live™).

Thoughts? Unburden yourself in the comments.

Pondering the Donut: Donuts and Democracy

No matter how you feel about the result of Tuesday's election, this campaign had one big winner that we can all get behind: the donut.

Simply put, donuts are the lifeblood of American democracy. They first surged into the national consciousness when the Salvation Army served them to our troops fighting in the trenches in the first World War, often frying them up right in a soldier's combat helmet. So it is not much of a stretch to say that the donut literally made the world safe for democracy.

And today, if you walk into any campaign field office, you will discover that the organizers and volunteer canvassers who give up huge chunks of their lives to knock on doors and speak to voters are sustained on nothing but donuts. There are donuts everywhere in these offices, in varying degrees of staleness, alongside innumerable Dunkin' Donuts Box o' Joes and piles of swizzle straws and torn-open packets of powdered cream.

Donuts even played a role in a mini-controversy in this year's campaign, in which a panel of AP reporters presented John McCain with a gift of donuts, including his professed favorite, donuts with sprinkles.

"We spend quite a bit of time with you on the back of the Straight Talk Express asking you questions, and what we've decided to do today was invite everyone else along on the ride," Sidoti explained. "We even brought you your favorite treat."

McCain opened the offering. "Oh, yes, with sprinkles!" he said.

Some observers on the left thought that perhaps reporters should not be so friendly with a candidate as to know exactly which type of donut he prefers. I have no view on that, but I do wonder what kind of judgment McCain is showing by preferring such a marginal donut as this. I mean, DD certainly makes some good donuts -- their cruller is particularly noteworthy -- but I would not put the sprinkles in their top five. Was McCain afraid to turn off his base by praising the "French" cruller?

As for President-elect Obama, we don't know his donut preferences, but he certainly made it clear on the campaign trail that he likes pie:

My white whale

If you're a regular here at NYC Donut Report!!, you probably know that I'm obsessed with an extraordinary jelly donut that I had at the Metropolitan Museum of Art cafeteria around 2005. I've been searching in vain for that donut ever since, and despite a recent close call, I still have not found it.

So you can imagine my chagrin last Saturday -- the one time in months that I decide to leave town for the weekend! -- when one of my readers sent me the following text:

Yo at mma, they have the jelly donuts!!
From: [redacted]
3:30 pm 11/2/08

My new plan is to sleep on the Museum steps Friday night so I can pounce when the donut arrives on Saturday morning. If anyone wants to join me, bring your thermos and pup tent.
.

NYC Donut Report Is (Er, Will Be) Back!!

Regular, almost-daily donut reporting will resume later this week.

Some of the stories we're working on in the NYC Donut Report!! newsroom include a somewhat less than timely look on nefarious nexus of donuts and influence in American politics -- was a donut-related incident involving John McCain and the Associated Press the cause of his undoing last night? -- as well as coverage of various "international" donuts.

Plus: I have some breaking news about turkey!!

Stay cool, people!!