Getting All Fancy on These Pastries

From lunch at Mr. Yummy (which was less than yummy), we then finished up our afternoon hangout with our Irish friend at a doughnut shop. We’d seen this place a few times as we were wandering around the downtown area, but because we were always out at the ass-crack of dawn (due to jet lag), and nothing was open until at least eight in the morning (including doughnut shops that served coffee, tea, and pastries) we hadn’t yet had a chance to try their selections. But having just finished a lackluster lunch, we needed something to perk up our day, so doughnuts sounded good.

The Rolling Donut is a small chain in Dublin, Ireland, specializing, of course, in doughnuts. They make very elaborate ones, stuffed with filling and layered with icing and toppings. They looked decadent as hell every time we walked by the shop, and we absolutely wanted what they were serving. So on this afternoon we went inside, finally, and grabbed two doughnuts. My wife picked out their s‘mores doughnut, while I got one of their blueberry cheesecake doughnuts. We didn’t get any hot drinks while we were there, but they did serve hot cocoa as well that I was tempted by. It was just warm enough outside, though, that a hot beverage didn’t sound good at the time (even if I should have gotten one so I could dunk my doughnut in it because that’s always delicious to do).

The s’mores doughnut has a marshmallow filling in the middle, and is then topped with graham cracker crust pieces, iced with chocolate, drizzled with graham-flavored syrup, and then topped by a lightly toasted marshmallow. The whole thing does evoke the feel of a s’mores, at least in its construction, and it did seem quite delightful to look at. Like, just sitting there, smelling it, you got that feel of a properly made s’mores right off the campfire (although without the fire or the smoky smell).

Flavor wise, the doughnut was pretty good. The combination of graham crumbles, chocolate icing, and the marshmallow on top really did give you that s’mores flavor. Having it on a doughnut was a somewhat confusing texture issue, though, because your brain says this flavor should have crunch to it, but the doughnut did not. But it also suffered from a lack of the marshmallow filling in the middle.

This doughnut (and honestly, the other we got as well) seemed like it was filled via shoving the icing tube into the middle of the doughnut and squeezing until more couldn’t go in, which would be great if the hole inside the doughnut were big enough. However only about half of the donut was opened up, so you had one side with a lot of marshmallowy filling, and one half without. The half that was filled was great. The side without was a little too thick, a tad too doughy, to be really great.

The same issue plagued by blueberry cheesecake doughnut. That one came with a light, blueberry icing, crust pieces, and two dried blueberries on top, and it has blueberry cheesecake flavored filling inside. As with the other doughnut the filling was only on one side, but curiously it was also very thick and there was too much of it. What would have been better here is if multiple small holes had been made in the doughnut for filling to give better distribution without overloading any one side.

The flavor of the doughnut was solid, though. The blueberry topping was delicious and made the whole doughnut taste sweet and fruity. The cheesecake filling was delicious when I licked it right out of the doughnut (it was my doughnut and I could lick it all I liked) and it tasted spot on. In all ways that mattered this evoked the flavor of a blueberry cheesecake. It’s just that the construction was a little off, not quite as balanced as I would have liked for all the ingredients that were in play.

In general I did like The Rolling Donut. Issues with specific construction choices notwithstanding, these were very tasty doughnuts that showed a lot of creativity and care. It’s likely that if we’d eaten at the place multiple times (especially if we lived near one of these shoppes) then we’d easily be able to find flavors that suited our exact needs. The fact is that I would have loved to go back and eat there more often, to find the flavor that was perfect for me, as there were so many choices available. But we were only there a week, so we had to try and move on. But I do think about it and wish we had one where we lived. These were better than most other doughnuts I’ve had.