Food Recipes:Delicious and Fun

I booked my trip to NYC months ahead and started reading lots of different websites and blogs to get some ideas about what I might want to do and see (and of course eat). One of these sites was newyork.seriouseats.com, which I had read now and again for quite a while already, but now started to read much more. One of the things that jumped straight out at me was Doughnut Plant in the Lower East Side, a not too long walk from my hotel. So one morning I headed off to get a doughnut for breakfast, well that was the plan at least. It turns out that I am not very good at navigation . I somehow managed to keep on getting lost on what should have been a very simple walk. I actually nearly gave up the hunt but I am very glad I didn’t.

Doughnut Plant is run my Mark Isreal who started the business back in 1994 using recipes of his grandfathers, who was also a baker, whose shop was in North Carolina. Whilst there is only one store in New York the doughnuts are on sale in other shops and cafes across the city (I spotted them in the Greenwich Village Joe the Art of Coffee) and there are numerous stores in Japan. Im hoping one in England is next.

Enough waffling time to get to the goods. I’m a big fan of coconut flavored sweet stuff so had no hesitation choosing the Coconut Cream filled square doughnut. It was absolutely delicious, definitely the best doughnut I’ve ever had, nice crisp outside fluffy soft inside filled with yummy coconut cream. Because doughnuts are deep-fried I have, in the past, found them to be heavy and a bit greasy but here they were light with no nasty greasiness. The coconut flavor was strong with plenty of filling. They cost from $1.75 for a glazed cake style ring to $2.75 for a cream filled yeast style square. The prices are not as cheap as places like Dunkin Doughnuts but the quality is much better and the yeast doughnuts and pretty big so I think the price was fine. As I had spent so much time looking for the place I was pretty hungry, so since they were so good I got another. I went for the Raspberry Cake style this time. The glaze was really great, really nice raspberry flavor but the cake style wasn’t my favorite. I often find cake doughnuts a bit dry and this had no filling so I probably wouldn’t choose this again. Had it been filled with jelly it probably would have been great. This is definitely a place that would become a regular stop in for me should I live in NYC, its absolutely worth a trip to the LES.