Dough-nut Underestimate the Power of a Good Cruller

Dough-nut Under-estimate the Power of a Chocolate-covered Cruller

           My husband does the grocery shopping in our small twosome family. I get to make a list of things I want or need. The rule is, they have to be things he can find without asking the store clerks too many questions, because he’s one of those “fast shoppers”. Stuffed dates or Holland Rusks are out of the question. On top of that, he usually starts out the conversation before I have had my morning coffee and haven’t begun to think coherently. “What would you like for dinner?” he asks kindly.  My brain says “Good grief, is it 5:00 already? Where did the day go?” He says “Be sure and put anything on my list that you need. I’m off to the store.” “Donuts” I mumble through my scrambled eggs. ”I need doughnuts. No sprinkles”.

Need. One honest look in the mirror points out the fact that I do not Need doughnuts, but I’m a sucker for baked goods, always have been. I can smell a good cinnamon bun all the way across town. When we lived in Germany, a stop at the bakery always came right after the nurse weighed my pregnant body at the obstetrician’s office. I reasoned that by the next appointment I surely would have shed the results of the two cream horns I was about to consume.

           And, speaking of cinnamon buns, whatever happened to the Cinnabon booth at the food court in the Duluth Miller Hill Mall? I believe I heard that we were deemed “unworthy” by both the Cinnabon and the Krispy Kreme folks and effectively cut off from any sugar highs we had been looking forward to. My research shows that if you are more than two miles north of the Twin Cities, the only way you can get yourself a box of those softball-size, melt-in-your-mouth, smothered-in-cream-cheese-frosting, cinnamon buns is to go through Harry and David and have them shipped. If I am wrong, please, please somebody tell me. I will be forever grateful. The only downside is, you might chance the disappointment of a “sorry, couldn’t deliver to your area, wrong house number” message, depending on the olfactory senses of the driver of the delivery truck. I know traveling around with a forbidden box of Cinnabons right there within reach, would cause me to violate the “guarantee to deliver” code in my employment contract, very quickly.

As to the Krispy Kreme rise and demise in Minnesota, it sounds like the Company was a victim of its’ own over-zealousness. First, they opened one hot donut shop in Maplewood, Minnesota in 2016. They broke all records for a Krispy Kreme franchise and sold over half a million glazed donuts the first week. Wowzer! I can’t even think how much sugar is involved in that statistic! Then, they got the tiger by the tail and started offering Krispy Kremes in every other grocery store and gas station in the Minneapolis/St Paul area. Well, you know how we are. If something is scarce and hard-to-get, we have to have it. If you can get it around every corner, “Ho-hum, who cares?” and we look for the next newest thing.” It probably didn’t help that some brilliant corporate executive had the unbelievable idea to offer an every-Wednesday bargain price, if you joined their special club. Of course, with short-sighted innocence, according to Wikipedia, they named it “The Krispy Kreme Klub. Didn’t take long for the advertising to be reduced to using just their initials and, guess what? That didn’t go over well with the public. KKK. The only possible redeeming statement would be about not seeing those pesky powdered sugar stains down your front.

So, they went from one shop to coating the entire state with sugary goo, to “no donuts for you!”  But, somebody forgot to tell that to the U of M student who started making and still makes the 9-hour round trip every weekend to Someplace, Iowa to gather 100 boxes of Krispy Kremes, which he sells to his friends and neighbors. He should be known as “The Good Samaritan of deep-fried Heaven.

I used to have a ratty-looking index card with my mother’s recipe for Molasses Doughnuts in her own handwriting. I would get it out and drool over it, every once in awhile and moved it from place to new place, as we changed houses. I never made them, just thought about making them. The thing that was curious was the fact that I don’t think my mother ever made them, either, She was of the opinion that deep-fat fryers should only exist in restaurants where there was staff that would clean up the well-used frying oil at the end of the day. She wasn’t having any of that smelly, nasty stuff sitting around polluting her pristine cupboards. That opinion also affected French fries, cheese curds and any other food item whose tastiness could be obliterated by being baked rather than deep fried. But her kitchen was spotless.

So last week, I was in need of comfort food, or at least envisioning and reading about comfort food, and decided that, maybe this time, I would actually make the Molasses Doughnuts. I even had the molasses. Gone. The recipe is gone. You know how I said in one column that you lose at least one box of stuff with every house move? Well, somewhere in a U-Haul truck, maybe headed for California, there’s a ratty, old index card, all krinkl-y with drool marks. In squiggly hand writing, there’s a great-sounding recipe for Molasses Doughnuts. Could you please keep an eye out for it? I’m thinking I’m going to need more doughnuts.