As promised, the fifth and final installment of Blognut’s Massachusetts Donut Tour. This’ll be quick, because honestly I’m sick of writing about Mass Donuts. Not because they don’t taste good, but because I never should have attempted the ambitious undertaking of churning out five posts on what was only a 1.5 day Donut expedition. It’s my own fault. And don’t think I would ever subject a Mom-and-Pop to such cynical brevity, as my final feast in the Pilgrim State takes place at a well-established, financially secure Pop-Nut dealer, Honey Dew Donuts.

HDD was founded in 1973 in Mansfield, Mass by Richard J. Bowen (Dick). At the suggestion of a customer, Dick began franchising his stores and he now oversees over 140 store locations around New England. He also claims to have introduced the “Drive-thru” concept to New England in 1978 when he installed one in HDD’s Plainville, Mass shop location. Blognut cannot confirm the validity of Dick’s claim.

So on the way home from visiting Sis-in-law in Melrose, Mrs. Blognut and I pull of the Mass Turnpike into a rest area where we’re greeted by a small, welcoming Honey Dew, behind which bustles all the typical rest stop action: refueling semis, screaming children burping up McNuggets, LL Bean families complete with urinating Golden Retrievers and Volvos.

Forgetting that in 1996 Massachusetts declared Boston Crème Pie the official state dessert, I order three ringed Donuts instead of the Pie’s Donut-y cousin.

The Honey Dew is a plain cake Donut drenched in what HDD calls their “super secret proprietary glaze.” And how lucky is Dick to be the proprietor of such a pleasing concoction?! It’s sugary without stinging what I think is my first ever cavity. It’s just moist enough so it doesn’t flake off but not so moist that it goos up my fingers. And it’s applied in the perfect abundance as to not overpower the dough with sweetness. But the dough is where things get interesting. The Honey Dew’s plain yellow cake dough tastes almost exactly like that from an Entenmenn’s glazed Pop Em. Which I happen to love.

After a gluttonous, Donut-fueled weekend I decide to save my last two purchases for a late-night snack back home in Brooklyn. Bad idea when dealing with a Honey Dip. This yeast-raised glazed just couldn’t handle the delay. Through no fault of its own, by the time I pull it out of the bag the glaze has dried and cracked into tiny shards which somehow disperse themselves all over the kitchen, like the Styrofoam beads that exploded from my beanbag chair the time I unzipped and jumped on it as a child. The dough is still relatively fresh and reminds me of a Dunkin Glazed, but given the circumstances I’ll not be rating the Honey Dip.

Last up, the Chocolate Cake. A fine Donut despite the near 6 hour lag time. The cake is rich and tastes like hot chocolate mix while again the glaze is applied in perfect proportion.

And that concludes our Massachusetts Donut Tour. Since beginning this 5-part series I’ve received numerous Mass Donut recommendations from readers, and I promise to hit each and every one of them in due time. But until then, stay tuned for more Blognut travels - next up, San Diego’s Gaslamp District.

Donut Scores:

Honey Dew -

Chocolate Cake -

Please welcome field-correspondant the Beta Blognut back to the pages of Blognut.

It’s that time of year again, wherein the Beta Blognut deems it time to eat another Donut and soars back over fly-over country to partake in the munchable fried delights of the Pacific Northwest (no, not a reference to smoking nuggs of kb). Last year, while we enjoyed the pleasures of Top Pot, we were bummed to have not tracked down a shop purportedly specializing in vegan donuts. Healthy vegan donuts, we might add, which on the surface sounds about as much fun as an amusement park that’s both sugar- and electricity-free.

Health food has thankfully changed much in the last decade though and a specialty shop like Mighty-O Donuts peddles a healthy donut that is not an oxymoron by any means. They not only revel in their contradictions –offering a ‘nut that is somehow organic, free of trans fats, and made with no animal products– but even embrace the stereotypes of their clientele, offering up “Good Cop” Specials (‘nut with a tall drip).

In all of Beta Blognut’s years of being dragged to co-ops and soy’n’spelt-peddling grocery stores by his zealot health-nut step-father, he must admit that he never thought he’d see the day when carob was a banned substance. That most odious chocolate knock-off that was the bane of health food eating, he is relieved to find the granola-munchers at Mighty-O carrying every licentious permutation of Chocolate Donut permissible.

Beta opts for the chocolate-on-chocolate affair. Demure, not too sweet, this fluffy cake ‘nut evokes nothing less than the taste and texture of a moist, rich bundt cake. This is healthy?! (A suppressed memory of carob bubbles up). Perhaps as a byproduct of its non-trans fat ways, the most curious aspect of this ‘nut is that it has a crispy bottom, giving it a texture unlike any other donut in recent memory.

Even when Beta preached vegetarianism (there will be no pics of Birkenstocks and hackey-sacks forthcoming), there remained a wariness to vegans and their ascetic refusal of milk and honey. It’s one thing to have enough primal scream therapy to overcome carob birthday cake, but wholly another to see vegetarian ‘bones’ and TVP molded into the shape of bacon or Thanksgiving turkey and passed off as ‘meat.’ Hence, there was great doubt as to how French toast could be pulled off with neither eggs nor milk. And while this wheat-colored ‘nut is a valiant effort, delicacies that normal folks like, be it French toast, sushi, Honey Nut Cheerios, beef tartar, and varmint should remain far from vegan palettes.

The most odd aspect of Mighty-O though is not all the slim, buff cops rolling in but the innumerable toddlers roaming the premises. In our scant time at Mighty-O, we count at least ten kids scooting about, which is made even more curious by the fact that Lady Beta (who is baby-crazy) is so consumed by the Sunday Times that her baby-dar doesn’t go off at all. It leads to a conspiracy that upon biting into the Mighty-Os peanut butter and jelly donut, said cakey elixir reverses the effects of aging, turning grown adult customers back into pants-crapping lads. Lord knows, the ‘nut is close to creating such a time-machine effect. With its pink glaze icing and chunks of roasted peanuts nestled in, the PB&J ‘nut is comfort food supreme. In an instant, we’re back in front of the tube for afternoon cartoons, enjoying a PB&J with the crusts lovingly lobbed off by mom.

Mighty-O Donuts
2110 N 55th Street
Seattle, Washington

Donut Scores:

Chocolate on Chocolate -

French Toast -

PB&J -

Well that’s it. My President’s trophy winning Sabres are done, despite having the number one offense in the NHL. So let’s all enjoy a Donut in tribute to a great season.

I’m sick of looking at those disgusting pink Bubble Gum things. So back to Massachusetts. Our final destination with the entire Donut gaggle in tow (for those who don’t remember, the team consists of myself, Mrs. Blognut, sis-in-law, and world renowned chef and Blognut field-correspondent Manuel Antonio) is Medford, Mass’s Donuts with a Difference. Great name.

DWAD occupies a narrow space in a row of commercial hodge-podge in downtown Medford and has been serving all-kosher Donuts since 1984. The inside is comforting and authentically “Donut shop”, complete with local-laden swivel stools and patrons resting on Formica. Although, if I remember correctly the place was covered in wallpaper depicting early farm equipment, or shovels, or something, which was weird.

Most of DWAD’s Donuts are fairly standard. But just when you’re about to be like, “I’ll have a Honey Dip (glazed), a Chocolate Cake, a – snooze – Jelly Filled”….they hit you with the Gracie Bar, a raisin-packed, cinnamon-flavored glazed Donut stick.

The Gracie is dense. Really dense. Its cakey innards are rich but soft, and speckled with raisins and cinnamon brown-ness. The outside is fried thick and coated with a perfectly produced glaze – not too runny, not too dry and flaky. While not the best tasting Donut on our Greater Boston Donut Tour – this honor goes to the Kane’s Honey Dip – it’s certainly up there.

Next is the Chocolate Cake. I know it’s not very exciting after that last one, but as far as chocolate Donuts go, this one is tops. Even better than Kane’s. The dough is rich and cocoa-y while again the glaze is of perfect consistency and moisture.

And the Peanut’s impressive too (whole Donut pictured up top). The rich, moist and cakey dough - which I suspect involves lots of buttermilk - is a model which many a lackluster cake Donut could serve to impersonate. And visually the Peanut has some of the purest Donut innards I’ve ever seen. There’s something so perfect about its clean, bright and uniform appearance that I almost don’t want to disrespect it by throwing it down my gullet with the other 6 lbs of Donuts I’ve eaten this weekend. But I do. And the thick coating of glaze and wads of crushed peanut give a nice texture against the dough, making this the best peanut Donut I’ve had to date, for sure.

As we sit on a roadside bench in front of DWAD, we close out the day with a straight up Honey Dip, or “glazed” as it’s called in other parts of the country. It’s decent. Light, fresh and air-infused dough which melts away quickly in the mouth in perfect proportion to the glaze. The only snag is a flour-y taste – just like the one we experienced early in our tour at the Donut Villa. And this is where things get weird. I look over and Manuel Antonio is viciously licking the Donut with the fervor of a German Shepherd taking down a pig’s femur. But it turns out his lapping is well-intentioned, as his chef’s palate is trying to determine the origin of the flour taste – is it the glaze or the dough? His conclusion? Both. Neither the glaze nor the dough by themselves impart flour-y-ness, but taken together in a bite and there it is. Nice work Manuel.

As we’re getting ready to leave, a local walks by and investigates the four of us bench-sitters. Most likely he’s befuddled by the way Mrs. Blognut is displaying Donuts in her hands - as a Price Is Right model would a toaster - while I jump around taking pictures of them and searching for the right lighting.

Local: “You like your Donuts huh?”.

Us: “Yep.”

Local: “Best Donuts in the frikkin world! You heard it from me.”

But I’m too busy trying to rid the thought of Manuel licking the Donut from my brain to respond.

Donuts Scores:

Gracie Bar -

Chocolate Cake -

Peanut -

Honey Dip -

Stay tuned for the 5th and final segment of Blognut’s Massachusetts Donut Tour.

Before I return to Blognut’s Massachusetts Donut Tour, I must first drop my first ever “0″ Donut score. Typically one Donut is as low as I go. But I’m here creating a customized, sub-scale score of no Donuts to accomodate the worst Donut I’ve ever tasted: Entenmann’s BUBBLE GUM flavored Pop’ems.

And this has nothing to do with mass-marketing, artificial preservatives, or Entenmann’s. I actually love regular Pop’ems and have been known to eat entire boxes in one sitting. My contempt is instead directed at the globby, sticky bright pink sprinkles that have both the taste and consistency of cheap, over-sugared bubble gum.

I mean, these things are truly vile. I couldn’t even make it through one bite without having to wash my mouth out with ice water and Fresca for the next 15 minutes. And I was still tasting bubble gum flavor on my jog nearly two hours later. DISGUSTING!

Donut Score: No Donuts

Demet’s Donuts is one of two indie Donut holes in Medford, Mass – or Meffa in Bostonian - the other of which will be covered in my next post. From the outside Demet’s is understated – akin to the drab, mid-century commercial architecture that so many Donut shops get stuck in – while the inside resembles a converted Dunkin: similar layout, heavily orange color scheme, etc. The clientele – at least on my visit – fulfill every stereotype about American Donut culture, complete with a cop parked outside and defeated-looking locals idly sipping black coffee and reading the sports section. There’s really something perfect about it that feeds into my romanticized image of hard-working Americans, New England factory workers, and busted-up minor league hockey teams – I only wish I could see Demet’s all grey and slushy in the dead of winter while watching Slap Shot.

Now I’ll be honest, our Donut experience at Demet’s was just OK. But we arrived late in the morning and from what a patron told me, their Donuts are much better fresh (a sentiment which applies to most Donuts). The Honey Dip (raised glazed) was dry and almost cakey, and lacked enough sugary coating to overcome its stale breadiness. The Lemon-filled was much better in terms of dough. And while what little there was of the neon glob of yellow goo in the middle was visually unappetizing, it had a decent citrus sour to it which didn’t taste nearly as artificial as it looked. Lastly, the Blueberry Cake was the highlight. The berries themselves were a hair artificial tasting, but the cake dough was moist and Dunkin-y and perfectly good. And the coffee was pretty OK too.

But Demet’s is really not about the Donuts. It’s all atmosphere. The place is kind of like the Neil Young of Donut Shops. It’s not pretty and may not taste all that fresh, but it’s got heart, and feeling, and a sort of down-to-earth rust that’s more important than airy dough and the right amount of glaze. So I’ll call it another solid Massachusetts Donut showing, this time thanks to atmosphere and not so much Donuts.

Demet’s Donuts
199 Mystic Ave
Medford, MA

Donut Scores:

Honey Dip -
Lemon-filled -
Blueberry -

Alright, back to Massachusetts Donuts. Knowing full well that it’d be hard to top Kane’s, we embarked on the next leg of our greater-Boston Donut tour, which again, I have to thank sis-in-law for so meticulously planning.

Donut Villa resides in a Malden, Mass strip mall staring anxiously in the face of a no-doubt strategically-placed Dunkin Donuts. And I’ve gotta say it right off the bat, DV is no Kane’s. But what is, right? It is, however, a perfectly acceptable Donut dealer who would steal my business from DD any day.

The fresh Honey Dip (glazed) is made of impressively soft dough (similar in consistency to Dunkin’s actually) topped with a thin coating of translucent and slightly flaky glaze. But as myself, Mrs. CPC, sis-in-law, and field-correspondent and renowned chef Manuel Antonio sit on a curb in the parking lot enjoying the Honey Dip’s simplicity, we’re all left befuddled by a slightly flour-y aftertaste. It’s not necessarily bad, but I’d rather experience the sugary vestiges of Donut typically left behind by glazed varieties.

The Sugar Raised (is this the right name?) is essentially the same Donut, only with an even coating of fine, granulated sugar. It’s so soft, just picking it up leaves a big imprint where my thumb had been. And again, there’s the flour taste, but not as strong this time. So it must be at least partially due to the glaze (more on the flour-y taste in upcoming posts).

And last, the geo-appropriate Boston Creme (pictured above). Even though we’re in the suburbs, I still have high expectations for one of the few Donut variations named for a US locale (another…the Texas comes to mind). And I like it. Again, soft, impressionable raised dough. Not too much smooth chocolate frosting. And a nice glob of even smoother Boston creme. The components are in perfect proportion. And I swear I detect the flour taste again, but the frosting and creme do a nice job hiding it.

Judging by the steady stream of patrons, it seems DV is doing just fine in the face of its orange and purple, corporate competition, which Blognut is glad to see. And how convenient is it that right next door to the Villa is an ambulance-chasing Weight Watchers outpost, ready to rid Malden’s Donut-eaters of their Donut-guts?

Donut Villa
1A Highland Ave
Malden, Massachusetts

Donut Scores:

Flour-y Glazed -

Sugar Raised -

Boston Creme -