Another week, another new doughnut to try. I got some good news this week regarding next steps in life, and so what better way to celebrate this than to treat myself to a day trip into London and, or course, a Doughnut Time doughnut.
I must admit that even I have been feeling a bit ‘doughnut-ed out’ lately, most likely because the last few doughnuts I have tried from Doughnut Time have been very sugary, very heavy doughnuts that just wipe me out for the day afterwards. I therefore decided to get myself a more simple doughnut and was mainly looking for a ring doughnut rather than one of the filled doughnuts. Now while they had my absolute favourite, the Liam Hemsworthy, I noticed this new doughnut on offer and decided to give it a try.
Cleverly named (as they always are) the Christina Fab-uilera is inspired by the queen of pop Christina Aguilera and and the classic ice lolly, the Fab. If you have never had a Fab ice lolly, they are these. These ice lollies are a British staple and a core memory of my childhood. I always knew it was truly summer time when these little goodies would appear in the freezer draws once more. They were a strawberry and vanilla flavoured ice lolly that had a chocolate flavour coating and sugar strands on the top third of it. They were the best lolly going. I believe you can still buy these (as I say they are a staple of British culture) but as they are not vegan friendly I have not had one in almost 10 years. I do not know if they taste the same as they did when I was younger, as I’m pretty certain there were a lot of e-numbers in them and no doubt way more sugar, but this doughnut was doing wonders for my nostalgia.
Overall, the doughnut it pretty simple. The icing is purely for decoration – it doesn’t taste of anything really but icing sugar so the colours are just for show as far as I could tell. The doughnut itself was also very cakey. It was light and fluffy, and not as dense as some of their filled doughnuts tend to be. It was sweet as you’d expect, but wasn’t sickly or overpowering, most likely because it is just a posh looking iced ring doughnut. Now the sprinkles are all made to a vegan recipe, and while I cannot find the exact doughnut ingredients on line, all of their other vegan doughnuts use sprinkles that are indeed vegan friendly, in that they do not contain any shellac or other animal ingredients in them. The sprinkles added a good crunch and the icing was definitely a nicely coloured throwback to my childhood, even if it didn’t add any real flavour to the doughnut overall.
As with all Doughnut Time doughnuts, this was £4.95. A bit more expensive than most other doughnuts out there and for such a simple doughnut, I think it is slightly overpriced. Very similarly to the D’oh nut doughnut, it’s a very nice doughnut but it doesn’t do anything different to most other doughnuts. It looks pretty, and is still a really yummy doughnut, but compared to some of the more extravagant doughnuts they have on offer, £4.95 seems slightly too much. I think that £4.95 for some of the massive, really dramatic doughnuts, are worth it because it’s all about the spectacle and the sugar shock that follows, but for these simpler, more ready-to-eat-in-one-sitting type doughnuts, I think £4 would be more reasonable.
Taylor Talks Vegan 