From ‘everything’ doughnuts to grilled cheese doughnuts: Will savory doughnuts replace bakeries?

It’s been a few years since doughnuts replaced cupcakes as the well-deserved dessert. So much, in fact, that a couple is seen giving up their wedding cake in exchange for rows and rows of tiny frosted creations, or parents celebrating their kids with a pegboard covered in icy dough rings that hang from hooks birthday, which is no longer surprising.

Runaway doughnut shops, like VooDoo Donut in Portland and Round Rock Donuts near Austin, are major foodie tourist attractions. Voodoo Donut opened an outpost at the Universal Orlando Resort’s CityWalk in 2018, and it’s not surprising to see queues circle the door several times and exhausted parkgoers returning to their hotel rooms with their signature pink boxes. rare.

These places may have invented the sweet and savory combo that blew gourmet socks a decade ago, but a whole new batch of doughnut shops is taking the torch, stirring up innovative flavor combinations, testing palate and winning hearts. Enter delicious doughnuts – not so much a dessert as a meal, and full of unexpected flavors.

Is it a bagel? Or donuts?
Donut shop Everglazed in Walt Disney World’s Disney Springs retail and dining district is another donut hotspot. Their signature move is pairing beautifully decorated doughnuts like peanut butter explosions with signature milkshakes, iced lattes and cold brews.

But Everglazed is also known for pushing doughnut lovers out of their comfort zones, boldly letting ambitious foodies enjoy savory-sweet combinations like doughnut breakfast sandwiches, grilled cheese, and cheeseburgers. Recently, the chefs at Everglazed have dressed their doughnuts up like bagels.

“What can we say? We’re a bagel-loving doughnut shop,” says Patrick Steele, Everglazed’s corporate executive chef. Steele said the doughnut-bagel combo wasn’t necessarily inspired by a trend, but they did notice savory and sweet combinations popping up in stores across the country.

Their grilled cheese doughnuts have been a hit since day one. “We opened Everglazed with the option to use our classic glazed sourdough doughnut in place of the rolls typically used for burgers, breakfast sandwiches and chicken sandwiches,” says Steele. “The success of the donut grilled cheese was the number one consideration when we developed new concepts.”

Bold and somewhat puzzling, Everything Donut looks like it should be in Netflix’s Is It Cake series. How to make it: Top glazed doughnuts with buttercream frosting and top with a delicious vanilla bursin cheese. Steele admits, “It will take a while to perfect.”

“It’s important to make sure that the herbal notes and the sweetness of garlic and cream are balanced effortlessly,” he explains.

The doughnuts are also topped with everyone’s favorite bagel seasoning and topped with fresh chopped chives. “It also takes some time to get the right ratio of chives,” says Steele. “Too much, it over-enhanced the onion-garlic flavor of Bolsin. We did a lot of in-house taste tests to work out these equations.”

When the team released the donuts, reactions were mixed. Steele said he suspects the resistance will come mainly from people who don’t like the salty-sweet combination. “They probably didn’t like the [original] sweet and salty doughnut combo: maple and bacon,” he said. “But the foodies got it right away and will come back for more.”

Bake with… brisket?
Miami-based The Salty Donut, which now has locations in Texas, North Carolina and Florida, has partnered with beloved grill restaurant Terry Black’s BBQ to launch brisket and cheddar Kolache.

Kolaches are traditional fried dough pastries from the Czech Republic, usually filled with fruit or poppy seeds. Kae Roffman, marketing manager at The Salty Donut, said when their team tried kolaches for the first time, they fell in love with it at first bite.

“When our director of pastry innovation, Audrey Sheib, introduced kolaches to our team, we were hooked,” she told Yahoo Life. “We sat down, went through some changes, started ranting, and Brisket and Cheddar Kolache was born.”

Sweet and savory flavors have been on the menu since Salty Doughnuts launched in Miami’s artsy Wynwood neighborhood in 2015. Their Maple Bacon Donut is a 24-hour fermented brioche topped with a pure maple syrup glaze, candied bacon inside, and porter beer.

Delicious donuts here to stay
The concept of sweet and savory doughnuts has been around for a long time, but how you put those flavors together can make or break a combination, Roffman said.

Steele agrees: He first saw the gourmet doughnut trend around 2016, when he started reading about it in trade magazines and seeing it on menus. “Creatives are constantly pushing the limits of taste and texture,” he said. “This trend is a natural culinary evolution.” Steel points out that Smoke and Donuts BBQ food trucks, located north of Disney Springs near Orlando’s Milk District, offer to add their signature BBQ to their fermented doughnuts Poke ends as an option for toppings. They also offer a special set of fried crumbles and donut sliders with delicious homemade sauces like lowland mustard, Piedmont vinaigrette, and grilled guajillo chile sauce.

“Most specialty doughnut shops also have some versions of the maple-bacon combo on the menu,” he added.

There are still some secrets to salty doughnuts that can give savory doughnuts a boost of flavor, Roffman said. “We have a secret savory doughnut on the way for Father’s Day,” she said, “and some larger sweet and savory doughnut collaborations for all of our other stores.”

As Steele said, the same goes for Everglazed, especially in the “outside” category. “I can’t reveal the combinations, but surprising our guests is key to our continued success,” he said. “There will always be the base of the classic doughnut, but the constant offering of ‘wow’ sets us apart.”