While my goal is one sweet a week, you’ve probably figured out by now I usually indulge in two donuts, albeit at the same donut shop. By my math, two donuts are equal to one dessert, my measure of an average sweet. As I mentioned in the previous post, I had the opportunity to snag donuts from two places on my wish list last week. I imbibed in two full donuts, just pieced together so I could sample as many goodies as possible. Here’s the second installation, Dee’s Bakery and Donuts.
I heard of Dee’s donuts on the Ellen Show. Ellen served Dee’s goodies to her audience on her 51st birthday show–and they are vegan! Love that! Dee’s fit nicely into my travel schedule, so I looked her up. Not only was she incredibly accommodating with my request to buy donuts, she has her website set up so it is simple to buy on-line and pick up at Intelligentsia, an uber-cool coffee shop in the Silver Lake neighborhood. I had a great time watching the baristas create beautiful free-pour lattes during my brief wait to pick up the donuts and snagged a bag of fresh roasted coffee beans to bring home to my hubby.
I quickly had three boxes full of beautiful vegan goodies in hand and flew back to KC with them. Dee seems very passionate about her baking and even checked in with me to see what I thought of the donuts. When I told her I had them in my possession for two days and was still in the process of delivering them to their intended recipients, she sent an e-mail asking that I microwave them for a bit to perk them back up. It’s impressive that she was concerned that we get maximum enjoyment from her donuts! I tried a bit of one not microwaved and it was heaven, slightly heavy like a cake donut but somehow light and fluffy at the same time. The next tidbit made it’s way into the microwave and the entire house quickly filled with the smell of baking, that comforting smell I associate with the holidays. If it is possible, the donut was even better warm.
I shared a few of the donuts with my friend Sarah and she said, “What is funny about me and how I like the donuts is that I really am not a big fan of donuts in the first place. There are a couple of brands/flavors that I like pre-vegan days, but I haven’t had a donut since maybe 1998? Really. Now, when someone puts “vegan” in front of a food, I am game! Anyway, what I liked is that unlike regular donuts, they weren’t overly greasy or sweet. As I understand, in the donut world there are some that are more cake-like and others are a bit more fried or oily. I would assume that these are more of the cake style, though not sure. I did sort of feel like I was eating a vegan cupcake. I let a friend have a bite and she liked it and she is neither vegan nor a donut eater. Chalk one up to Dee!”
And here comes the best part of this review! My friend G! wrote a guest review of Dee’s Donuts. I met G! at the gym on Saturday morning with these donuts (which may somehow be against gym rules…totally worth breaking rules, these donuts are!) and let her pick which donut she would like to have. She’s a fellow Sweet-a-Week gal and vegan. I think she might have teared up a little at the site of a vegan donut with sprinkles, which made it worth hand-carrying these little lumps of donut love back to KC.
Enough from me, here’s G!s review…enjoy!
When you become a vegan, after 30 years of being an omnivore, you don’t completely grasp what you will miss. There were things that popped into my head as I started this vegan venture – like cheesy pizza and BBQ ribs, but there are a whole lot of things that I didn’t think about.
One of those was DONUTS. But donuts for a midwestern vegan is as elusive as a day at the beach.
I once tried to make my own donuts based on a recipe from vegan yum yum. I thought they were delicious. I packed them up and delivered them to my coworkers in a sort of “HA! These are VEGAN and they are DONUTS and they are GOOD!” But they weren’t buying it. The kind people said “They taste good, but different. They taste healthy.” The unkind people said “I don’t see how you live like this.” The real meanies said “I am NOT eating any vegan food.”
Sigh.
Then sweet Johnna offered to bring me back a vegan donut from LA. A vegan donut that is ELLEN’s FAVORITE. So great – so cool. She obtained them from Dee’s Bakery and Donuts, which sells out of a coffee shop in LA.
My first vegan donut that wasn’t made by me was SUBLIME! Johnna offered me a huge selection, and I zeroed in on the one with sprinkles – because they were my favorite type of donut pre-veganism. I like the crunchiness of the sprinkles before the dough-y softness.
The donut was pretty cake-like – not fried fluff that I remember donuts of yore being. They were heavy and not-too-sweet. Which I think is the objection most non-vegans would have of most veganized sweets. “They taste good, but different. They taste healthy.” It is like a donut+. Not fast food to mindlessly scarf down around the watercooler, but a sweet cake to be savored and noted.
I would eat one of those donuts every day if I lived in a universe where I didn’t have to watch my weight and they were sold in Kansas City. And Ellen and I were neighbors and we went to the organic veggie market together and laughed and laughed…
Johnna told tale of other vegan donuts in the LA area – including some that had Tofutti inside! O_M_G!!! Here is hoping I have a reason to go to LA sometime soon – where there are donuts AND an ocean. For now, I will live off the memory of the vegan donut.
(The Toffuti filled donuts came from Ronald’s in Las Vegas, a spot I visited before the 52 Donut Project began, but probably blabbered about in my giddiness about vegan donuts in L.A…hopefully I’ll get back that way soon for a full review. –Johnna)
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