Voodoo Revisited #3

Continued from Part 2

With the vow renewal behind us, Mrs. Blognut and I had two full days left in Portland with nothing left to do but celebrate by scarfing down as many Northwest Nuts as possible. And we didn’t waste any time. Before returning to our hotel the night of the ceremony, Tres made sure we had plenty of Voodoo to accompany our Dominic Doughnut (aka: best Doughnut of all time). He stuffed a box with a random assortment of Nuts and handed it to us on the way out. We said our goodbyes and thanked him for remarrying us beneath a giant Holy Doughnut, promising to return the next day for another batch of Nuts. As I mentioned in Part 2, that night we dined on Dominic. Three out of the five Doughnuts Tres had packed for us were topped with cereal, so we thought it best to save them for the morning.
So the next day we got up at sunrise (still on NYC time), called room service for a pot of Peet’s and opened our big pink box of Nuts. We started with the Triple Chocolate Penetration. It was absolutely insane - moist and dense devil’s food cake, rich and creamy chocolate frosting, and a massive collection of Cocoa Puffs stuck on top form a gooey hunk of chocolate decadence. I don’t know if it was the sugar, or the caffeine hiding in all the chocolate, but after finishing the TCP I felt like I’d mainlined a gallon of espresso. I was seriously running around the room like a rabid monkey (and I now knew where Tres gets all his mad energy from). The only downfall of this magnificent Nut was the slightly-stale Puffs. But I’m sure this was due to the fact that it had been nearly 18 hours since this TCP had been made. Cereal can only be exposed to air for so long before going bad, you know?

Not long after I came down from my frenzied sugar-haze, we bit into our second Nut of the morning – the Bloop Loops. Definitely the most colorful selection offered by Voodoo, the Bloop is a frosted yeast-raised Doughnut topped with loads of Fruit Loops (again, through no fault of Voodoo, mostly stale). If there’s one thing sweeter (sweet like sugar-sweet, not like “rad”) than a bunch of Cocoa Puffs stuck on a Doughnut, it’s a bunch of Fruit Loops stuck on a Doughnut. The light and airy yeast dough tried to bring the flavor down to earth, but went nearly unnoticed in the setting of such an intense sugar-overload. This Nut had me right back in the throws of hyperglycemic delusion and tasted every bit as good as its chocolate predecessor. It was arguably the sweetest thing I’ve ever eaten.

I lied about the Bloop Loops being the sweetest thing I’ve ever eaten. The Captain Crunch Doughnut (see above) was by far the sweetest thing I’ve had. Essentially identical to the Bloop, but with Captain Crunch’s Crunch Berries instead of Loops, this Nut was the most challenging yet. You know those pure maple sugar candies you get in places like Vermont or Western New York? And you know how they’re so sweet that after two bites your mouth starts to tingle and you’re in desperate need of a glass of salt water? Well this was sweeter. I tried analyzing the taste and producing some sort of description for you, the Blognut reader – but was only able to retain intermittent snippets of flavor in between waves of ensuing sugar shock. An occasional glint of creamy vanilla frosting with a periodic burst of faux-berry from the Crunch, but mostly just SUGAR! I was only able to stomach a few bites before I ceded victory and returned it to its home in the pink box. It would take three sessions spread throughout the day before I was able to finish it.

At this point things this got less exciting. But the simplicity of our last two Nuts was a welcome change after having downed three gaudy cereal-based varieties. The tiny Blueberry Cake tasted like DD’s Nut of the same name, but with a stronger blueberry pop, like the kind you get from those sugary canned berries in boxes of muffin mix. The Maple Bar also mimicked Dunkin’s version: soft and airy yeast-raised dough with an intensely maple frosting. Both were delicious.
So having eaten five Dougnuts that day, plus a few bites of Dominic, we decided to hold off on any more Nuts until the following day. We spent the afternoon downing hoppy Rogue Ales and contemplating which Voodoo selections to try next.

Rogue Ales Distillery and Public House.

Rogue Sampler: Imperial IPA, Brutel Bitter, Uberfest Pilsner and St. Rogue Red (plus underwear).

Doughnut scores:

Triple Chocolate Penetration -

Bloop Loops -

Captain Crunch (I deducted .5 because I'm pretty sure this Nut gave me my first ever cavity) -

Blueberry Cake -

Maple Bar -

Voodoo Revisited #2

Continued from part 1

After wetting our appetites with a Dirty Snowball, Mrs. Blognut and I trounce around Portland all afternoon anxiously awaiting our 9:00 PM vow renewal. We stop in one of the city's umpteen vintage clothing shops (I think it was Red Light) and walk out with a gorgeous blue polyester blazer and an equally poly black neck tie to go with my jeans (entire vow renewal outfit = $10). Around 8:30 that night, we put on our formal wear and head over to Voodoo. In the car (a rented Ford Escape), Mrs. Blognut says to me, "Can you believe we've already been married an entire year!? I wonder how many doughnuts you've eaten during our first year of marriage?" "I lost count last October," I respond.

When we arrive, the place is packed. Middle-aged couples, swarms of hipsters and the occasional homeless fellow, mill about the doorway. All brought together by the unifying power of the Nut. We step inside the tiny store space and check in with the Donut-Lady behind the counter. The next thing we know, a man with long red hair wearing an orange lei and a straw hat comes frantically running out of the kitchen as if peaking on some doughnut-fueled psychedelic sugar high. "Hi I'm Tres, like the number three in Spanish. So you're the ones getting married, huh?" "We're already married, we're just getting our vows renewed" we tell him. "Well let's get on with the wedding!!" he says, as he runs in the back to grab his "supplies."

So this was our first meeting with Tres Shannon, who cofounded Voodoo three years ago with his Doughnut-Partner Kenneth "Cat Daddy" Pogson (whom Mrs. Blognut made the vow renewal arrangements with via email). With no prior Nut-Experience, the two of them enrolled in "Doughnut-School" in Los Angeles where they learned how to "handle a rolling pin" and apparently fed a maple bar to Brad Pitt. You can read the complete Voodoo story here.

Tres returns carrying a big pink box and asks us to stand under the Holy Doughnut (see The Biggest Doughnut We've Ever Seen in Part 1). "Open it," he says. It seems Mrs. Blognut and the boys at Voodoo had conspired to create an enormous Nut-Representation of our cat Dominic. The three of us stare down into the box at what is most definitely the finest Doughnut we've ever laid eyes on.

"Life is like a doughnut," says Tres, "well, actually more like a cruller."He then asks us to each hold one side of the box while we tell the story of how we met. I won't get into the mushy details here because afterall, this is a Doughnut blog and I intend not to lose focus. He takes the box from us and sets it on the counter beneath the giant Doughnut-Altar. He then has us hold hands. "Now look up at Isaac for spiritual guidance" (or something like this – I can't remember what he said exactly). We look over our shoulders and for the first time notice a velvet painting of Isaac Hayes hanging above the front door. After staring at Isaac for a few seconds, Tres retrieves a Frosted Cake Doughnut with colored sprinkles and instructs us to feed each other a bite – which we do. The cake is moist and solid with creamy frosting and loads of sprinkles - simple and delicious.

Dominic in a Box.

Wedding Nut.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that throughout the ceremony, this panhandler who'd followed us in, continually asked us for "a couple dollars" to mend his "flat tire." After Mrs. Blognut and I had each finished our respective bites of doughnut, I called him over and gave him a bite too – though I didn't feed it to him.

At this point a huge crowd of hip emo-kids stroll in looking for a Doughnut-Fix. Tres then holds up our hands and announces to everyone that a wedding is taking place and that they are welcome to watch. "Man! You're getting married in a Doughnut shop. That's so cool!" says one of the hip kids. Then he gives me a high-five. Tres now has us hold hands again and say a few more words about each other. When we're finished he announces us husband and wife. As we kiss he throws a handful of Fruit Loops in the air deeming them "Tiny Doughnuts." And that's it! We've now been rehitched at Voodoo Doughnut.

We stick around for a while talking Doughnuts with Tres and the steady stream of patrons. "We're going to be featured on Jay Leno on Wednesday," Tres tells us, "And Anthony Bourdain stopped by to do a feature for one of his shows." It seems everyone wants a taste of Voodoo. "You want to see the 20 foot man?" he then asks. "Sure," I answer. The three of us step outside to a now jam-packed side walk. In the street sits a school bus, atop which a free-jazz band blows and spews a cacophonous mixture of Ornette Coleman and Captain Beefheart. In front of the bus stands an enormous metal robot-looking man-puppet pounding away on a Fender and being controlled in marionette fashion by two rope handlers at his feet. A young girl runs around with a cymbal attached to a rope periodically crashing it to the ground (surprisingly, somewhat rhythmically). And then, in a nod to another Pacific Northwest ax-grinder, this 20 foot Voodoo Chile sets his guitar aflame and watches it burn while horns wail behind him. For the grand finale, he hoists an organ and slams repeatedly his giant steel hands crudely against the keys. Before long, the organ too gets set on fire. The weird part is that we later find out that Mrs. Blognut used to work with the man who created the 20 foot man, back when we lived in Virginny.

20 Foot Man Playing Fender.

Once back at the hotel, we dive into the Dominic Doughnut - it's a buttermilk cake Nut covered in rich, white vanilla frosting, but with orange on the head and tail to match the real kitty. The dough is the most dense we've encountered in a doughnut - almost scone consistency, but not as dry. It's absolutely the perfect doughnut, partly due to taste and partly to circumstance. We savor it for the next 3 days, starting each morning with a giant bite of Dominic.

Look for Part 3 this weekend, when the Doughnut-Binge begins.

Doughnut Scores:

Vanilla Frosted -

Dominic Doughnut -

Voodoo Revisited #1

A couple weeks ago, the night before we left on our Parisian-Donut-Expedition, Mrs. Blognut surprised me with what might be the greatest anniversary present of all time: a trip to Portland, Oregon to get our vows renewed at Voodoo Doughnut. Really, could Blognut ask for anything more? And while Blognut field-correspondent Beta Blognut dabbled in Voodoo back in July as part of his two-part series on the Pacific Nutwest, this was my first ever visit to both Portland and Voodoo. So pull up your computer chairs and enjoy the first in a four-part series chronicling this momentous event and exploring the warped and twisted world of Voodoo.

While often lumped together as the nation's foremost avant garde Donut-Institutions, NYC's Doughnut Plant, and Portland's Voodoo Doughnut could not be more different in terms of Donut-Philosophy. The Plant relies on a more artisanal approach, with complex doughs, glazes and consistencies, while Voodoo prefers to tug the heart strings a bit more, reminding its patrons of that youthful willingness to mash up any set of random flavors so long as the result was sweet and delicious (kind of like when Ally Sheedy puts cereal and pixie stick on her sandwich in The Breakfast Club – but I guess that was more a gesture of adolescent defiance than flavor-pairing curiosity, but whatever). Biting into a Doughnut Plant Nut challenges the palate with flavors like Lavender Glazed and Tres Leches Cake, while munching a Voodoo results in a mouthful of Cocoa Puffs.

But while Voodoo's preparations are founded in childhood longing, in actuality they're considerably more adult. With suggestive Donut names like the Cock-n-Balls (the shape matches the name) and Triple Chocolate Penetration, and with a logo proclaiming "The Magic is in the Hole," it's clear that Voodoo's mind rests proudly in the gutter. And such a mindset fits in nicely with its city's anything-goes attitude, which the fellow on the plane sitting next to us so perfectly captured:

Guy on Plane: "This your first time to Portland?"

Us: "Yep. Have any recommendations for things to see and do?"

Guy on Plane: "You bet. You guys like strip clubs?"

Though an odd thing to say to someone you've just met, we assumed he was joking and forced a laugh.

Guy on Plane: "I'm not joking. My wife and I go all the time."

Us: "Really?"

Guy on Plane: "Yep. Portland's a free thinking city. Strip clubs are everywhere out here. People from Texas try and come up here and close em down. But it's in the constitution that Oregon be allowed to have strip clubs."

We had no idea what the hell he was talking about. But he was right about there being a lot of strip clubs. And it should be noted that Guy on Plane had a beard, orange tinted Oakley's (which he wore the entire flight) and, to the dismay of the other passengers, a howling German Shepard puppy. But back to Voodoo…

Our renewal was scheduled to take place on Saturday night at 9:00 PM (at which point it would be midnight back home and thus the beginning of our anniversary). But do you honestly think Blognut could wait until 9 PM to get his hands on a Voodoo Nut?! Of course not. Afterall, I've been anticipating this marvelous day since starting this stupid blog back in February. So first thing Saturday morning I dragged Mrs. Blognut to 22 Southwest 3rd Avenue for my first ever taste of the Voodoo.

Storefront.

Support your local doughnut.

The Voodoo storefront is beautifully simplistic, consisting of nothing more then a single door in a plain, brick warehouse-looking building. At night, something called the Cruller Chandelier of Life shines brightly through a small window above the door. The shop itself is tiny – and crammed with loads of Doughnut paraphernalia. On the back wall hangs the biggest doughnut I've ever seen (which we would later find out serves as the altar for weddings and vow renewals). A single rotating display of doughnuts shows off the brightly colored and oddly shaped collection of Voodoo Nuts available that day (a movie of which can be seen here thanks to field correspondent Beta Blognut).

The biggest doughnut I've ever seen.

Rotating doughnuts.

Confident we would have our fill of Nuts that night during the ceremony, I showed a surprising amount of self-control and only ordered one – the Dirty Snowball. Not trying to sound shallow, this was an attractive doughnut - and lets face it, Donut culture is a superficial world where appearance can carry nearly as much weight as taste. The Snowball is a chocolate cake Doughnut, topped with pink marshmallow glaze and shredded coconut, with a big glob of peanut butter resting on top (taking Zappa's "don't you eat that yellow snow," one step further). The dough is slightly sweet and has a soft, moist consistency, while the frosting is sugary and creamy and balanced in texture by the crisp strands of coconut. But once we hit the peanut butter there was no turning back – it took over every taste bud and provided a gooey delicious finish. What a perfect way to start our three-day feast-of-Voodoo-gluttony.


Dirty Snowball.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of our trip to Portland to see Mrs. Blognut and I get hitched for the second time. We'll also be introducing Mr. Voodoo himself, Tres Shannon.

Doughnut Score:

Dirty Snowball -

An American Donut in Paris

With the exception of one overly-gamey piece of chicken, just about everything we ate in Paris was aces. Fresh baguettes. Buttered almond croissants. Nutella crepes. All aces. So why are the Donuts so awful?! Seriously, we thought for sure the culinary center of the world, and the birthplace of the Beignet, would certainly fry up a top-notch Nut. Not so. Many of the Parisian Beignets and Donuts we encountered were nearly inedible and every one of them scores near the bottom of the Blognut 10-point scale. Maybe it's that this overly-sophisticated food Mecca is inherently unable to successfully produce a food as simple as a Nut. In fact, I doubt most Parisians would even consider Donuts a worthy feed for their fattened geese, as even fois gras liver can't detoxify something so vile. This said, France does have a rich, if cloudy, donut history.

The word "Beignet" comes from the early Celtic word "bigne," meaning "to raise." In France, it would later come to mean "fritter," referring essentially to any clump of fried dough. Exactly when the Beignet arose in France is unclear, but what is known is that 18th century French colonists brought the recipe for so called "Beignet Fritters" to New Orleans, Louisiana, where they exploded with popularity and have since become associated with the city. Though there are numerous variations on the Beignet, the base recipe calls for deep-fried dough, usually sprinkled with confectioner's sugar (like so many other International Nuts). Over the years, French culinary tradition has snubbed its fried creation and the modern day French beignet has become a sub-standard, recycled version of the 20th century American donut.

Without further ado, here's a run down of all the crappy donuts I ate in Paris:

Beignet de Framboise (Raspberry-filled Beignet) - sitting in a large, empty glass display case were these two pathetic little donuts. They tasted like stale dinner rolls stuffed with cheap and sugary raspberry jelly.

Here's a picture of me eating a disgusting Beignet de Framboise on the street and washing it down with a Kronenbourg. The only thing worse than a French Donut is a French Beer.

This donut sucked.

More sucky donuts. This time, they were actually called "Donuts."

I've saved the worst for last. This is a Beignet au Miel, or Honey Beignet (pictured above), which we purchased in Montmarte as a pre-dinner snack. It weighed roughly two pounds and had the consistency of a hard, dried-up sponge. It tasted like burnt plastic with a slight honey aftertaste and was hands down the worst thing we ingested the entire trip. We took one bite and threw the rest in la poubelle.

Blognut would like to apologize...

...for any negative health consequences incurred from reading this blog.
Health officials suck.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15020846/

Plus, Blognut need not be reminded of the cardiovascular consequences of the nearly 2 dozen VooDoo doughnuts we've consumed in the past 4 days (3 of which were nearly the size of my head).

Blognut Goes West

With Parisian Nuts and VooDoo Part 2 slated for next week, Blognut-in-law has decided to step in and fill our pages with a travel tale of her own.

This life-experienced roving researcher, and ancestor of Blognut and Yuk, was given the task of pursuing the best doughnut in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I felt up to this, as the pursuit of doughnuts has been given a high priority in our family.

Jackson is a small town. It is wealthy and western. After a lengthy two hour search, and the questioning of many witnesses, this researcher could not find a single doughnut. I inquired extensively and no one knew where to find doughnuts. Perhaps that is why they don’t call it Doughnut Hole, Wyoming.

I happened to be only one of a dozen other life experienced folks touring Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons. My cohort’s culinary finds consisted of game and ice cream. At any rate, the most promising eatery for something close to a doughnut was “The Bunnery” a bakery and restaurant at Hole in the Wall in Jackson Hole. They offered some delicious looking baked goods and we chose the Sticky bun (Cinnamon roll). It was nice and large.

We brown-bagged it and loaded it into the van. Our first stop was at Lewis Falls....chosen as much for it’s port-a-potty as it’s beauty (although it WAS beautiful). We divvied up the bun into 12 pieces (yes, it was large enough) and tasted, savored and rated. We gave it a 7 because although the crust was nice and flaky, the raisins soft and delicious, we found it a bit on the dry side. It certainly qualified as being sticky. We just have one question! What’s a doughnut junkie to do in Jackson?

Just a few of Blognut-in-law's traveling companions.

Le Rock

Still in Paris. It's definitely the best city I've ever been to - which is saying a lot, because I grew up in Buffalo. While I'm currently working up a Parisian-Nut piece, I just wanted to ask you something: after a night of slurping wine at the brasserie, Mrs. Blognut and I returned to our hotel and for the first time turned on French TV. It seemed really bad, but it was hard to tell for sure because it was all in French. The one show we were able to get in English was Conan, whose guest was The Rock. Out of nowhere The Rock mentions that he loves donuts. Then he says that Dunkin wants to name a Donut after him, at which point Conan says that this is probably the greatest American honor. So does anyone know if this is true?

Blognut Update

So Blognut will be traveling for a week or so. But think of it as a business trip since we'll definitely be downing some fat Beignets in Paris and then, to ensure that we're adequately jet-lagged, dabbling with VooDoo in Portland. In the meantime check these out:

The New Yorker reports on the political role of the Donut...

...and Timeout NY features an international donut roundup (Of which we've only had one!! The orange-infused Indian fritters from Tabla - I guess this means we've got a lot of work to do when we get back).

Bloomnut

Sorry I'm a couple of days late on this one. Just wanted to make sure everyone knew that someone threw a frosted donut at Mayor Bloomberg!

Castro Nut

Not all donuts have to be round. I guess this is a fairly obvious statement considering that most would consider an éclair a form of donut. And a donut stick - of course it’s a donut – it’s called a donut stick. But I think it can be hard to break from the round donut convention. With few exceptions, ask anyone to draw a donut and you’re likely to get the standard Homer Simpson ring-with-either-pink-or-white-frosting. This actually brings up an interesting point, because technically one could just draw a circle, representing a filled donut. But this would never happen. A circle just doesn’t represent the holey donut ideal that’s developed in modern day America over the last century. But Blognut refuses to limit ourselves to such convention. We’ve come up with a simple checklist outlining what qualifies something as a donut (keep in mind that this is our definition of a donut, and that other donut-lovers might take issue with the criteria listed below):

A donut/doughnut must be:

1) Made primarily of fried dough

2) At least partially sweet (Blognut does not abide by the Eastern European philosophy that a donut can be savory – if something has sausage and cheese in it, it’s probably not a donut)

3) Of manageable shape - any manageable shape, round or not (A donut must be palm-able and conducive to eating it on the go. Anything requiring a plate or a fork (ie, funnel cake) is not a donut, a controversial view, I know)

In accordance with the above criteria, the item featured in this post is most definitely a donut.

Friday afternoon: After a produce-infused stroll through the Union Square Farmer’s Market, Blognut heads down 17th Street anxious to cram a Cuban press from Havana Central. And we do just that. Definitely one of the better Cubans we’ve had in NYC, Havana’s Classic Cuban Sandwich consists of smoked ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard. It’s not too greasy and comes with just-sweet-enough sweet potato fries. But why, do you ask, is Blognut writing about a Cuban restaurant? The answer lies in a star-shaped stick of fried dough named after the horns on a breed of Spanish sheep.

Churros are elongated, fried pasties that originated in Spain and have become popular in Latin America, the US and much of the Caribbean. They get their star shape by being extruded through a cooking syringe called a churrera. They are often referred to as Mexican Doughnuts and are generally coated in either cinnamon, sugar or both. Many churro-eaters abide by the combination of chocolate con churros, in which the churro is dunked in cup of hot chocolate, but in the US they are often dipped in either melted chocolate or caramel.

Havana Central’s Churros are coated in cinnamon and sugar and come with both chocolate and caramel (dolce de leche) dipping sauces. They really are weird looking. There’s something about the 8-point star shape that seems too unnatural to eat. But one bite and we forgive them for their odd appearance. The good thing about Havana's Nuts, is that while they’re crispy on the outside (as they should be), the center retains a moist, barely-cooked quality that is often lacking in churros (especially the ones sold street-side in NYC). A churro should never be so brittle that is easily cracks in half, it should have some give to it. The flavor is packed with cinnamon and sugar and goes great with the dipping sauces. We found that dipping in both chocolate and caramel provided the best taste experience (and it must be in this order, chocolate first, caramel second). By the end the caramel sweetness becomes so powerful that I’m forced to cut it with a pinch of salt on the tongue. Mrs. CPC finds this practice disgusting.

Definitely one of the best International-Nuts we’ve had – right up there with the Loukoumades from Lefkos Pyrgos in Astoria, Queens – Havana Central’s Churros are worth saving room for. Blognut would also like to commend the churro for being a non-conformist when it comes to Donut-Shape, even if they look somewhat odd.

Donut Score: 8.8

Havana Central
22 East 17th Street
New York, NY 10003