Kotas Reviews the Dunkin' Donuts Croissant Donut

Ah the simple doughnut. A ring of dough that is deep fried and then maybe coated in some variety of sugar topping. Simple enough, right? Well, I have news for you. Doughnuts are in as wide a variety of types and flavors as any food you'll see. I ain't just talking about the topping selection either. There is cake and yeast dough types, a nearly infinite variety of shapes and textures, and of course the various toppings, fillings, glazes and so forth. Still, it is not often that we get a base variation on the theme. With that in mind, we examine today's item: the Dunkin' Donut Croissant Donut.

Nothing says special like a special container...and price.

The idea of the Croissant Doughnut, or "Cronut" as the food media has termed it seems like a slam dunk. Take the croissant, which is one of the finer baked products to come out of France, and fry the dough up like a doughnut. Voila! The moist flakiness of the croissant paired with the sweetness and robustness of the doughnut. Perfect for your morning coffee or any time. Several bakers claim to have "invented" the Cronut, even as early as the mid 1990s, but it rose to prominence in the public eye a couple of years ago in boutique pastry shops. Now, it has finally hit the mainstream. Let's see how it compares, eh?

Premium Packaging. Premium Pricing. Rather Pedestrian Appearance.

I'll be honest, this thing? Does not look all that special. It comes in its own little box that you have to purchase separately from any normal amount of their other doughnuts and costs $2.50 plus tax at my local Dunkin'. Seems they could have made it look a little better than "Kroger Bakery Glazed Doughnut" really. It has that same hexagonal shape as many grocery store doughnuts and that does not scream "premium doughnut".  Dunkin' Donuts is not known for the quality of its plain glazed doughnuts, though their cake doughnuts are excellent, but I still might have tried to class it up a bit.

The taste is decent I suppose. Chewier than their usual yeast glazed doughnut, and not really very flaky or light. It does not hearken back to a croissant much, though it is fairly tasty, beating out their regular glazed handily...but not 2.5 times tastier. Their regular doughnuts sell for $0.99 each, less if you buy in bulk. This is good, but not "super premium" good, so the value just isn't there.

On the FACE Rating System, this doughnut gets zero faces. It's fairly tasty, and certainly better than their usual plain glazed offering, but the super high price is just not worth paying outside of "for curiosity's sake". If you are a doughnut fan, give one a try, but I wouldn't expect it to change your standard doughnut consumption habits at all. If they ditch the premium price and bring it into their usual rotation of doughnuts though, it would definitely become a regular in my dozen. 

Kotas Reviews Summer Seasonal Doughnuts

Last Friday, in honor of National Doughnut Day I went to Dunkin Doughnuts and bought a dozen to share with Charlotte and my in-laws. They did not have my favorite doughnut from Dunkin (Chocolate Glazed), but they did have a couple of "Flavors of the Month": Key Lime Pie and Lemonade, two similar takes on the concept of the filled doughnut. I sampled both. Here is my review.

The Key Lime Doughnut is their standard filled doughnut base, with a lightly lime flavored thick glaze, sprinkled with graham cracker bits, and filled with what I assume is supposed to be key lime filling. The lime glaze is actually quite tasty, with the graham cracker bits taking just a bit of the edge off the sweetness. The rest of the doughnut is okay, and the filling tastes a lot like artificial key lime flavoring. I give it one smiley face. I'd eat it again, but it will not become a regularly indulged in item.

The Lemonade Doughnut is similar in appearance, but falls down in execution. It is their standard lemon-filled doughnut, with a thick vanilla glaze (if it was supposed to be lemon flavored, it failed) topped with what can only be described as "crunchy lemon-flavored bits". The "bits" were chalky and tasted only vaguely of lemon, while the vanilla and lemon flavors clashed when taken as a whole. The filling was their standard lemon filling and due to the extreme sweetness of the glaze ends up being very bland. I give it one frowny face because it is really hard to fuck up a doughnut,, and while it isn't god awful, it took a perfectly fine doughnut type and made it meh.