The name may have changed but the products are still the same. I used to be a big fan of Doughnut Time/Rodeo however I have noticed in recent years that their creativity has stalled a little bit. The doughnuts used to be different designs, and different flavours, whereas recently I have noticed that everything now just tastes like sugar. No nuance or subtle flavourings at all. Just sugar.
I was optimistic that this flavour could be different, as carrot cake isn’t known for being a very sugary or sweet cake flavour, so there could have been a lot of scope to really play into those savoury flavours. Alas, they did not.
This doughnut is basically a standard glazed doughnuts, but with a carrot aesthetic. It tastes nice, sure, but it’s your basic and very standard doughnut. It is hard to mess that up. There was really nothing about this that tasted like carrot cake. Which is a shame because they could have been creative with this, with having carrot perhaps in the actual doughnut dough, or having the crumble on top be grated carrots instead. It was also very disappointing that there is no filling in this doughnut because a cream cheese frosting filling was such an obvious and easy option they could have gone with. The little carrot on top is also made of chocolate. Which was nice enough, but was again just standard chocolate with carrot colours.
This doughnut is still the same price as the other Doughnut Time doughnuts, £4.95. Which is very expensive considering this is just a basic doughnut with a bit of decoration. No other flavours, no other textures, and barely any decorations at that. As I say, I have lost a bit of love for the Doughnut Time/Rodeo range as the flavours have just blurred into ‘unspecified sugar’ in recent years. Perhaps this is a sign that the original Doughnut Time model was failing, hence the name change/rebrand/enfranchisement of it. It is still somewhat early days for Rodeo, so maybe they may try to build up their own new collection of flavours, but for now, I’m likely going to skip for a while.
Taylor Talks Vegan 