doughnut dolly...i hardly knew ya'!

I'm continuing with "missed opportunities week" and talk about getting in just under the wire. Seems that was the case with Doughnut Dolly. I had heard about her before from her store in Berkeley and her pop-ups around town, but I had never gotten around to trying them. I know, right! Then word came she was opening a stand at The Market in the Twitter building and I figured I would get there eventually after giving the spot a chance to get settled and in the flow of a regular day. That day came a couple weeks ago, but little did I know they were just a few days from shutting down ALL THREE of her locations for reasons that still remain vague at most.

Nevertheless, I was able to swing by the SF location in the nick of time to not only try her doughnuts, but to get them served up by Dolly herself!

I never would have guessed anything was amiss as she was bubbly and cheery and helpful. I probably would be too if I were around doughnuts all day. Or at least riding high from all the sugar. The way it works is you choose your type of doughnut--plain, sugared, chocolate topped--and then you choose your filling flavor which she pumps into the donut by hand. If you are lucky and nice you might have gotten an extra pump. She was serving up four flavors and of course I got one of each in flavor and doughnut type. They were $3.50 for powdered or sugared and $4.50 for the iced and chocolate covered. And in the grand scheme of doughnuts in town, they were big-ish. Somewhere between Bob's and Johnny's.

What could go better than a lemon glaze and a raspberry filling. I might have liked a half pump more but the filling was thick and bursting with fresh raspberry flavor. You can see the seeds in the filling. The doughnut itself is somewhere between fluffy and doughy and give you good heft and texture for a dessert. Something we all know I like.

The sugared sazerac was a vanilla custard cream infused with sazerac, a rye whiskey. Gonna say not my fave. In fact, only took one big bite and then I was kind of done. I think you really have to have a taste for that type of whiskey. Maybe if it had been a bourbon I'd be on it, but not the rye.

Okay, so this was actually supposed to be a powdered sugar topped one but I didn't notice it was the sugar one. But the real star here was the filling. It was like a smooth and creamy dark chocolate pudding. Not too sweet, it was a refreshing change from some of the sweet chocolate fillings other places have. I think she could have easily sold this by the cup with just a dollop of whip cream and a spoon. Yum!

The chocolate on top was of the dark again which paired well with the bursting vanilla cream custard. I think this one got an extra pump. You can see the beans from the vanilla in the custard giving it a light flavor in a thick and creamy pudding like filling. Again another filling she probably could have sold by the cup. The mix of the chocolate and the custard together made this one my favorite of the four.

Well, there they are, the doughnuts you may have missed if you didn't get to one of Doughnut Dolly's three locations before they closed. Did you miss anything? Maybe a little, particularly on the filling front. I might have liked my doughnut a little less doughy and a little more puffy, but that is a minor quibble as these were definitely ones I would try again.

We may never know the reasons for the abrupt closures, but Dolly did say to "stand by for the future!", whatever that means. So don't give up all hope, there is the possibility she may return in a pop-up form, after all, that is how she got this whole business started and nothing says you can't return to your roots to re-discover your future. Yikes! Sorry, that was a little deep, think I'm still on a sugar rush from eating all those doughnuts at the same time!