Black Label Bakery: Raspberry Cheesecake Doughnuts
A difficult day calls for doughnuts, I think. After a stressful morning of driving woes, I was treated to these doughnuts. I was going to go for the 'ol reliable white iced with sprinkles. A familiar comfort for a frazzled soul.
But for you, I got adventurous.
Where from?
This doughnut was picked up at the local co-op. It is a green co-op, if that makes a difference. It came in a snazzy black box and promised a premium experience. Packaged in two, rather than four, I do expect them to be pretty premium!
Initial Thoughts
The packaging was classier than you'd expect for a doughnut; expectations are high. The latticed pink on the white is pretty. I do expect the icing to taste like cheesecake. I'm being picky here, but the hot pink and grey chunky sprinkles are discordant with the delicate icing work. But that's just me.
The Bread
The dough is soft and brioche like. It has a good firm bite, while still being melt in the mouth smooth. Just what we like. There is slight evidence of underproofing with the caverns on one side. But I don't think it detracts from texture. On its own, I do think the dough is a bit tasteless. Far from premium, this dough is your standard mass manufactured dough. No complexity here. But, I think this isn't the worst thing in this case. I'll get to that in a second!
The Filling
This is a Doughnut Daily first! Today's doughnut was filled with raspberry jam and, what they describe as, curd. I don't tend to expect ring doughnuts to have a filling, so this was fun. Firstly, I am very impressed that there is jam consistently around the whole ring. The quantity of filling was perfect. It didn't ooze unpleasantly onto my lip, a sensation that I personally find unpleasant and strangely reminiscent of a challenge at a school assembly whereby you had to eat a sugared jam doughnut without licking your lips. What the message of this particular challenge was is lost on me. But in any case, this wasn't that. The jam was on the sweeter side and only gently tart, more store bought than homemade – which is to be expected. The curd could have gone missing entirely had I not sought it out. I think that it was there to represent the cheesecake element. It has the soft sourness of cheesecake. I can see their vision with it. And the texture was there. But this doughnut was a textural experience! If I hadn't stopped to search for it, I'd have missed it.
The Topping
Back to your regularly schedule headers with this one. I'm going to start on the topping with the sprinkles. The sprinkles on this weren't your standard strand sprinkles. Maybe they hoped the rough and chunky sprinkles would look more sophisticated? Grown-up? I start with the sprinkles they single-handedly tick a raspberry cheesecake box that was otherwise missed. These sprinkles were probably some combination of sugar and citric acid. They had a peppy little tang to them. They made up, I think, for what the jam lacked. They are the main contributor, however, to the textural experience (overload) that I describe above. Underneath, the white and pink icing did its best to live up to my high expectations. The flavour reminded me of the yogurt from those yogurt-covered dry fruit. Slightly sour, slightly sweet, creamy texture.
Final Verdict
These are some really yummy doughnuts. I had high hopes and was prepared for disappointment. But actually, for a shop-bought factory produced doughnuts, these fulfilled what they were offering well. Do you have any doughnut suggestions, questions or ideas? Reply to this post! And you can support by sending a gift card to your favourite doughnut shop using this email: doughnutdaily.blog [at] gmail [dot] com (UK based only at this point, thank you!)
