Back from Christmas in Charlottesville. Caught up with Mom and Dad, saw lots of pals and ran around the yard with Duke, my parents new Golden Retriever. He’s INSANE in a good way and I wish he could fit in my tiny Brooklyn apartment. But the best part was when Grandma took care of a banana Donut in three seconds flat.

Said Donut was from Chaps, the super authentic soda fountain on CVille’s Downtown Mall which field correspondent Kim recently reported on. I didn’t manage to speak with Donut maker Nelson in all his gold-toothed glory but was able to land a swivel seat at the bar and enjoy a three-course lunch: a banana Donut, a pistachio Donut and a sour cream Donut. All were cake varieties and perfectly dunkable in Chaps’ steaming black coffee.

I won’t go into too much detail given Kim’s excellent and thorough reporting skills, but the pistachio is probably the finest Donut in CVille outside those from my all time number one, Spudnuts. It’s rich, moist cake was speckled with bits of gently crunchy green nuts and the whole thing was fried a deep brown and lightly glazed.

But more important was Grandma’s testament to genetic food predilection. Like I said, I brought Grandma a Chaps banana which she downed in record time - after which contently uttering, “That was the best thing I’ve eaten in weeks.”

I couldn’t help but think if there’d been things like internet and digital cameras when Grams was coming up, she’d have beat me to this Donut blogging thing by about 60 years. Donut coverage in the Truman era!

Thanks to Slim for photographering.

In other news…

I’m a little late on this one, but those of you in and around Pacifica, California still have a few days to check out Donut Time’s Annual Donut Christmas Tree. This sugary conifer is made fresh every year and sits in the front of Donut Time from Thanksgiving through New Years. When I asked owner Herrjoe Chen if he wanted the Web address for this blog so he could check out the tree coverage, he replied, “No. I’ve got no time for a computer. I’m always either sleeping or making Donuts.”

Happy 2008.

Holiday Donut thought: a plain old-fashioned dunked in egg nog. Hopefully Mom can make this happen. Good tidings all around.

This is the second post in a series featuring candid sightings of primarily B-list celebrities caught in the act of thinking about Donuts. Pictured above is Nick Lachey thinking about Donuts.

This weekend Mrs. Blognut proposed I change the name of this blog to “Blognuts.” Something about how my Donut coverage is slacking and she’s been providing me with ideas. I really don’t know what she’s talking about but I imagine it has something to do with me trying to feed Donuts to our cat. And maybe something to do with our recent stroll down under the Brooklyn Bridge.

We were sipping these crazy good, rich, decadent hot chocolates from Jacques Torres when she all the sudden ran across the street to Almondine, this French bakery where Torres implanted his partner to avoid competition. She came running back holding a filled Donut. I’m not sure this justifies her proposed plurality but it was definitely a nice score.

The dough was fried a crispy brown and had a definite bready quality, like a Euro Donut. Plus crazy filling. A rich gooey, bloody looking raspberry jam loaded with whole berries. Best jam/jelly filling in the city. Not the best Donut. But the best jelly for sure. And for a little extra sweet the outside was coated with granulated sugar.

Despite my Donut addiction, I’m actually more of a savory fellow. So after a large hot chocolate, two chocolate chip cookies and the Donut, I fell into this frantic sugar shock state and couldn’t stop thinking about how I needed sausage.

Almondine
85 Water St.
Brooklyn, NY 11201

A cup of 9th Street coffee and 13 grams of trans-fat. That’s how I started my day. My two-pack of Entenmann’s Softees were so burdened with hydrogenation I could almost feel my heart stop.

Now I’m not sure what’s going on here because I was under the impression that Entenmann’s had gone trans-fat free. And my recent variety box was totally devoid, claiming 0 grams all the way down to the powdered sugar. Maybe the Softees had been riding the shelves for a while. Or maybe I’m wrong and the folks at Entenmann’s are still down with artery cloggage. I’m looking into it.

But either way, let’s talk about how Softee Frosted Donuts are the best packaged Donut ever! I know I’m in the minority on this one, but come on. These things are so rich and moist with fattiness they’re more like slabs of pork belly than Donuts. And the chocolate frosting – is there a better example of over-preserved artificial American snack food genius?

Now let’s compare. Everybody – and by “everybody” I mean the 5 or so people I’ve spoken with – seems all about the powdered sugar and cinnamon. But the powdered are bland and I usually end up snort-choking the sugar particles. Same goes for the cinnamon only with more brown. And as for the newer varieties with the log-shaped crumb things on top, I’ll be addressing those in an upcoming post – for now I’m sticking with the original three.

But really, if you’re stooping to packaged store-bought Donuts, go with Entenmann’s Softees two-pack.

Pictured above: Softee Frosted with our new deer head salt and pepper shakers

Blognut’s taking the weekend off to celebrate Christmas three weeks early. But Donut coverage continues as field correspondent K steps in with a story out of my former home town of Charlottesville, Virginny.

This Friend-of-Blognut specializes in finding Donuts in donut-scarce environments. She leaves the Donut-heavy locales, like L.A. for example, to the professional. Considering all the other eating that can be done here, Charlottesville’s downtown mall is pretty light on Donuts. Until a couple years ago, one could find a morning homemade Donut at Chaps, the old-timey ice-cream parlor with the formica table tops, aqua blue pleather booths, and aluminum walls. But around the time Blognut came into existence, the Donuts at Chaps disappeared. FOB has been hassling Tony LaBua, Chaps’ super-gregarious proprietor, to start supplying them again, for the love of God. Tony was full of promises but no action for a couple years. FOB even threw out that she “writes for a Donut blog, you know” to try to light a fire under Tony.

During those lean years, unbeknownst to FOB, another fan was hassling Tony even more incessantly to start with the Donuts again. Nelson Lewis (pictured above) was constantly asking when the Donuts would reappear, and finally Tony made him put his money where his mouth was. Tony told Nelson that he would teach him to make the donuts and that if he was willing to do the job, he could be the agent who brought fried sweetness to the mall once again. Never one to let down his fellow man, Nelson rose to the challenge, and on Sept. 5 jof this year, joy, light, and Donuts returned to the downtown mall.

Before we get to the Donuts, some background on our heroes. Tony opened Chaps in 1985. Originally from West Islip, Long Island, Tony hails from an appropriately sugary past. His uncle owned a Carvel ice cream store in Charlottesville for 16 years, and his grandfather owned a grocery in Ozone Park, Queens, for 50 or 60 years, selling homemade ice cream and Italian ices.

On the day FOB sat down to talk Donuts with Tony, Nelson happened by. When Tony introduced me as a Donut field correspondent who would be writing on the Internets about Donuts, Nelson said “The good Lord must have meant for me to meet you today and sent me here!”

Chaps offers pistachio, chocolate, white cake, and sour cream donuts. So far, I haven’t been able to get there early enough to get a white cake, which is apparently wildly popular, but I have had other three kinds.

The pistachio: I love pistachios, but am usually disappointed by things that claim to taste like them. An exception is this pistachio donut. It’s got a glaze and nice nutty pieces on the outside, a wonderful, almost boozy taste, like a rum cake, and actual pistachio flavor. Super moist, some might say a bit greasy, but it works for me. Tony says the recipe is adapted from an employee’s pistachio cake from about six years ago.

The sour cream: As it should be: perfectly moist and rich. Very simple, with a small amount of glaze.

The chocolate cake Donut: not overly sweet, good cocoa flavor, as Blognut would say. It has a light glaze and would be good dunked in coffee, though sadly I had no coffee on hand the day I sampled one.

What is life without something to look forward to? Tony and Nelson have been experimenting with banana donuts, and when I mentioned the Carter Mountain apple cider Donuts, I could see the wheels turning in Tony’s head. If these wonders come to pass, you’ll hear about them on Blognut.

Chap’s Ice Cream
223 East Main Street
Charlottesville,