Chaps Ice Cream

subject: Chaps Ice Cream
take-out vehicle: paper bag
cost: $3

It turns out my tour of local donuts wasn't as done as I thought it was. After running into Tony, the owner of Chaps, at a Halloween party this past weekend, it occurred to me that a) he's been making his own donuts for quite some time now, and b) he didn't really dress up for the party, he just threw on his old black and white prison outfit.*

Anyway, for breakfast this morning I had three donuts: one chocolate, one banana, and one pumpkin. Each had the same cakey, moist, and slightly oily texture, but as can be seen in the picture, the pumpkin was by far the biggest. The exterior of the pumpkin donut also had the most bite to it; it may have been fried before the others or in another batch of slightly hotter oil.

Of the three, my favorite flavors were the pumpkin and chocolate. The pumpkin was sweet and seasonal, and the chocolate was rich and also sweet, but pleasingly less so than the pumpkin. I could see it going very well with a cup of coffee from The Java Hut, which sits right outside his door. (Come to think of it, that could be why he started making donuts in the first place.) The banana flavor, on the other hand, wasn't very apparent in the banana donut. It tasted more like a regular cake donut with just an itsy bitsy bit of something banana-esque.

While certainly good for those of us on the mall in the mornings, these donuts probably won't lure many who aren't in the vicinity, but then again, Tony isn't really in the donut business. Tony is an ice cream/diner man, and he's a darn good one. I'll have to go back soon for scoop or two, and maybe a cheeseburger beforehand.

* Of course I'm joking. I know Tony and it was just a costume...at least I'm pretty sure.

Carpe Donut

subject: Carpe Donut
take-out vehicle: paper bag
cost: $4

This was the last stop (I think) on my tour of local donuts, and it's tough to say whether or not I saved the best for last. On the one hand, Carpe Donuts is one of only two places I know of (the other being The Baker's Palette's mobile donut machine) where you can get donuts cooked to order. On the other hand, a Carpe Donut is not your typical donut.

Though coated in cinnamon and sugar and initially sweet, I found these donuts to be almost savory by the end of each bite. I tasted a few different flavors, most of which are commonly used with sugar, but that here stood out by themselves: cinnamon, cloves, maybe some nutmeg, and naturally some apple (they are apple cider donuts, after all). Come to think of it, they tasted very much like apple cider in cake form—which, I imagine, was the entire point.

My only other local experience with apple cider donuts came from Carter's Mountain Orchard, and from what I can recall of their product, Carpe Donut's donuts have a larger, softer interior, more cinnamon-sugar coating, and a greater depth of flavor. Granted, my memory may be hazy since it's been two years since I've had a fresh donut from Carter's Mountain (I'm looking at you, person-who-didn't-put-up-a-sign-telling-me-that-the-fresh-donuts-had-moved!), but I'm pretty sure I'm right.

Though I did not get any, Carpe Donut also offers hot apple cider and freshly brewed Greenberry's coffee. Matt, one of the owners, told me that Carpe Donut offers its own special blend: a 50/50 mix of Greenberry's Sumatra and Costa Rican. Naturally enough, he calls it the Carpe Donut blend.

While waiting for my donuts to cook (he was just finishing the dough when I arrived), Matt also told me about his hot chocolate: "There's so much cocoa in it...it's to hot chocolate like espresso is to coffee." I'll have to make a point to return for that.

So, were these the best of the local donuts? Honestly, I still don't know. There's still something wonderful about a light, sugary, cavity-threatening ring of dough, but I will say this: If you're looking for tasty donut, Carpe Donut won't disappoint.

Carter's Mountain Orchard

subject: Carter's Mountain Orchard
take-out vehicle: plastic box
cost: $4.79

What a roller-coaster of a day. Well, that's not really accurate. Roller-coasters go up and down; my day, at least my day with donuts, just went down. Way, way, way way way down from the heights of awesome to the depths of disappointment.

If only I had known. If only someone had told me, "Hey John, they moved the fresh donuts to the other barn." But no. No one told me. So I stood in line, naïvely confident that the pre-made, plastic-boxed apple cider donuts would be just as good as the fresh ones to which I was accustomed. Ha! What a young fool i was.

But, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, I suppose. And in this case, it also taught me a valuable lesson: look around before you go the same spot you've gone to for years to get the wonderfully fresh donuts that you're used to getting from the same spot every year. You never know, some idiot might have moved the fresh donuts and forgotten to put up a sign pointing to the fresh donut's new location.

But I'm not bitter. No, for my $4.79, I got six decent, room-temperature, previously-made apple cider donuts and one warm, sweet, satisfying nugget of wisdom. I guess, in many respects, that's a bargain. The next time I go, however, I hope it'll be the other way around.

The Baker's Palette...again

subject: The Baker's Palette
take-out vehicle: paper bag
cost: $2.00

It's a popular fixture at the weekly city market, but why "The Palette's" little donut machine isn't front and center in their bakery is beyond me. That thing is magical, and I even heard a rumor it runs on fairy dust.

From under its square, city market tent, the donut machine creates but one kind of donut: awesome donuts. These awesome donuts are then sold as either glazed or cinnamon-sugared. My preference was the glazed. It was cakey, super moist, and then even more moist from the healthy drizzle of white glaze that soaked into it. The non-glazed surface, by contrast, was just crisp enough to keep the whole thing together.

It's a pity the city market is in its final weeks. Hopefully the donut machine will keep on cranking through the winter inside the bakery proper. If not, something drastic may have to happen.

Come on! Who's with me? Vive la donut machine!

Spudnuts

subject: Spudnuts Donut shop
take-out vehicle: paper bag
price: $3.14

(editor's note: 8:23am—mmm, ate 3.5 donuts)

I'm sure there's a restaurant in Charlottesville that's been around longer than spudnuts, but I couldn't tell you what it is, and I bet you $5 I don't like it as much. Spudnuts has been around since Richard Wingfield (who sadly passed away in 2005) opened it in 1969, and I've been eating his tatery confections for as long as I can remember.

When I was growing up, on some lucky Saturday mornings, my dad—always unannounced—would go out and pick-up a dozen-count box of glazed spudnuts. Those were the best saturday mornings ever (well, until those bastards as Fox cancelled my favorite Spider-Man cartoon. A-holes!).

(editor's note: 8:48am—whee! sugar!)

Anyway, I grew up in a household of four, which was nice because it was easy to divvy up a dozen of anything. Three per person. Easy. Done. So we would all gather for breakfast, I would take my three donuts all at once and inhale them, because that's how healthy growing boys (and men, it turns out) consume donuts. Then, my blood sugar nice and high, I would jitter my way to the TV to watch cartoons.

Inevitably, I would end up back in the kitchen later in the morning. Why it took me so long to recognize this pattern of events, I don't know, but it turned out that while my routine was to eat donuts whole then run to the television, the rest of my family actually sat at the table and talked to each other—and in so doing, forgot to eat their third donuts! So everytime I would start looking...

(editor's note: 9:14am—holy crap. no more whee. need caffeine.)

...for a snack , i would come upon three, whole, untouched spudnuts. Those fools! How could anyone not eat their entire allotment of spudnuts!? Was something wrong? Was this some kind of trick? Devious plot or no, I got three more spudnuts, and I was very happy.

Today, thanks to a slightly more tame sense of exuberance, I got only four donuts: one glazed, one glazed then coconut-sprinkled, one glazed then chocolate-iced, and one blueberry.

Of the three varieties of glazed, my favorite, by far, was the plain glazed. The coconut itself seemed a little on the dry side to me, and the chocolate icing tasted less like actual chocolate and more like a not-so-good mix of powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and water. Call me a purist, but if I'm getting chocolate on my donut, I want the real thing, or at least a close facsimile. I did not finish this donut.

The blueberry donut was the runt of the litter. Smaller and denser, the blueberry is one of spudnut's cake donuts. It was actually quite light compared to other cake donuts I've had in the past, and remarkably moist. The blueberry taste wasn't overpowering, definitely more donut than blueberry, but it tasted...right.

I've long argued with myself over which is better: the plain glazed or the blueberry, the apple or the orange. One is light and airy, the other less so and not so much. But both are reasons to get up early in the morning, and both are worth the near-obligatory mid-morning nap. It's an argument that I hope to keep having for some time to come.

Thank you Richard Wingfield.

(editor's note: 9:35am—found a reese's peanut butter cup. that should help, right?)