Another day, another doughnut. This time from Crosstown, a doughnut company that is spread out across the country but is mainly focused within London. According to their website they have around 15 locations, including stores, trucks and market stalls, all around the city so if you do plan a visit then this store will be super easy to find no matter which area you are exploring. Slowly the Crosstown doughnuts have really been growing on me. I tried this vanilla bean the other week and it really did just seem to hit that part of my soul that I didn’t know was missing something.
The actual doughnut base is a sourdough base (I believe all of their doughnuts are sourdough) so it taste more like a slightly sweet bread than it does an actual cake doughnut. It is therefore way more savoury than the usual sweet doughnuts out there. The vanilla bean icing makes this doughnut a very fancy version of an original glaze, except it is nowhere near as sweet. The icing is rich and sugary, but the sourdough of the doughnut base really does water it down a lot and balances out the sweetness really well. There is no sickly aftertaste and works very well as a nice pallet cleanser. I feel it would also be ideal to have with a strong coffee or a big pot of tea.
Many of their doughnuts seem to be based on the more savoury flavours, so they don’t offer many super sickly combinations. But this doughnut seems to be their version of an original glaze and it does that perfectly. It isn’t the most inventive of a doughnut – like I say, it’s basically just a glazed doughnut but with fancier ingredients - but it is very yummy and a really good one to try first, especially if you’ve not tried a sourdough doughnut before. I have to admit that at first I wasn’t a big fan of the sourdough base, but now I think it may actually be my preferred option.
Another fun thing that I found is that while they are not a fully vegan brand, they do offer s lot of vegan options – when I went to the store they had about 5 vegan options, and all of them are very, very posh flavourings. I have yet to try more of these experimental doughnuts (such as pistachio and rose, or coffee and cardamom) but they definitely seem to be trying to offer vegan options that you wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else or in any other type of treat. And I appreciate that kind of innovation in my food.
These are quite pricy doughnuts, no doubt because they are a specialist doughnut company but also because you tend to only find the store in big city centres. Each doughnut alone is about £5, with some of the very specialist flavours or limited editions versions costing slightly more, while some of the more basic staples cost slightly less. You can however buy multipacks and these tend to work out ever so slightly cheaper than buying the doughnuts individually, for example a 6 pack of doughnuts costs £25. I definitely think these are worth the very posh treat though. This doughnut especially is a very welcome break from a very sweet treat, more like a savoury pastry than an actual cake. But it is also not something that I would buy on a regular basis, so I think a little posh treat every so often is worth it.
Taylor Talks Vegan 