LaMar's for work

What: Cinnamon Crumb

Where: 16th and Q, Lincoln NE

When: Saturday, April 25th, 2015

A coworker of my husband's tried to get him to bring in maple syrup and butter if she brought it pancakes for work on Saturday. He said he thought donuts might be easier to eat in the office. So I drove him to the LaMar's on the way to his office to get some lovely donuts and he asked me to come in with him to help pick them out. Yeah, he works at 8am on Saturdays. I was wearing my pjs. Sorry. He did get me a lovely cinnamon crumb donut that we split. 

Looking through my archives, I see that we had one before (Monday, February 17th, 2014) but this one was fresh. And amazing. Not the neatest to be eating in the car, but soooo delicious. If you like cinnamon coffee cake, this is the donut for you. 5/5. May have single handedly redeemed LaMar's in my book. May have.

Twin Cities Donut Crawl

For Memorial Day Weekend this year, my husband and I went up to Minnesota. (He likes to pronounce it Min - ee - so - ta with an accent on the "so" part). Apparently we went up the wrong weekend! The Twin Cities Donut Crawl looks AMAZING and I really wish I could go! They take over a park for the day, everyone gets a bakery box and you walk around to the different store to collect your donuts! 11 places are participating, 2 may just be for the coffee though. 

Stay tuned here though because we did make it to four donut places on our five day trip, so reviews will be coming!

Donut Haven

What: Maple frosted cake, Chocolate frosted Texas donut

Where: Donut Haven, 13807 P St, Omaha, NE 68137
When: Sunday, March 8th, 2015

For my birthday this year, my husband took me on a tour of Omaha. We started by trying to find a donut place he found online, but in reality it's one of those carts you see at sporting events for mini donuts and funnel cakes and therefore the address listed online is just the residence for the operator of the cart. But, nevertheless, we found another donut place to check out. Donut Haven in Millard. It's been around for awhile and is definitely your basic old school donut shop. They have a case of day old donuts for half price (Born Yesterday). They have coffee without crazy flavorings. And they have Texas Donuts. If you look carefully at the background photo for this blog, taken in San Francisco, there are some giant donuts on cookie sheets. Donut Haven is only the second place that I've seen these giant donuts, and it was time to try one.

We got a variety of donuts, including my standard maple cake donut and the awesomely large Texas donut.

There is probably a reason that you don't see giant donuts very often. And it has to do with math. (See, math is useful in the real world!). The ratio of surface area to volume (so outside crusty part to soft inside) is all off on the giant donut and therefore it tends to be dry inside. Dry donuts are not yummy. You want to keep the surface area to volume ratio high so that the inside stays nice and moist. And there's your math lesson for the day. You're welcome.

The maple was ok, but nothing amazing. We will probably won't drive out of our way to go back, but if we're in the neighborhood maybe we'll stop in. I'd say 2/5 for the Texas one and 2.5/5 for the maple.

Here are some bonus pics of the Born Yesterday case:

Federal Donuts

What: Chocolate dipped cake, blueberry drizzle cake, hot cherry lavender, hot cinnamon sugar, free honey dip
Where: Federal Donuts, 1219 S 2nd St, Philadelphia PA
When: Monday, March 16th, 2015

website

I have reviewed Federal Donuts before, and with better pictures, but this was the last donut stop on my northeast trip in March and it ended up being a surprising amount of donuts, especially since we went for the chicken...

Federal Donuts is a little place in Philadelphia that does fried chicken and donuts. Not waffles, donuts. I had never had their fried chicken so we decided it would be a good lunch the day my husband and I flew back to Nebraska. We get there, all ready to order chicken, and then spend 10 minutes checking out the donuts.

We end up ordering two fancy cake donuts, two hot cake donuts, and two half orders of chicken. The fancy cakes are iced all at once and in the display case. The hot cakes are made as you order them, sprinkled with sugar and flavoring, and given to you warm. If you've never had a warm donut (besides Krispy Kreme) I recommend it.

It was also nice that they made the warm ones, because then our lunch turned into a three course meal! Our two fancies were blueberry drizzle and chocolate frosted. The blueberry had excellent flavor. Our two hots were cherry lavendar and cinnamon sugar. The cherry lavender was nice, a good subtle flavor and not at all in your face. The cinnamon sugar was great, very much a standard donut done very well. I vote 3/5 for chocolate, 4/5 for blueberry, 3/5 for cherry lavender and 4/5 for cinnamon sugar.

And then we got our chicken. Which was delicious, and came with two more donuts. Every half order of chicken you get comes with a warm honey dip donut. I'm glad I ate the other donuts first. If the honey dip was the first Federal Donut I had ever tried, I probably would have been confused as to why the place is always so busy. It was just weird. Not very sweet at all. I'd say a 0.5/5.

Dottie's Donuts

What: Almond Joy and Cantelope

Where: Grindcore House Coffee, 1515 S 4th St, Philadelphia PA 19147

When: Monday, March 16th, 2015

Dottie's Donuts

My husband and I were recently at a Sleeter Kinney show in Omaha with a friend from work and his friend from the east coast. When she heard that we would be traveling to Philadelphia soon she raved about Dottie's Donuts and how good they were. Then, when talking to my sister about them, a pastry chef in Philadelphia, she said she had started to hear about them, so we looked them up on Facebook, and another friend had a review for them. How had I never heard of them before? They rose to the top of the list of things to do in Philadelphia pretty quickly. 

Dottie's doesn't have their own store front, from what I could gather off Facebook they bake in a closed pizza restaurant and then sell to a ton of local coffee shops, including the one my sister goes to all the time. In fact, my two sister's think they had some Dottie's Donuts unknowingly the last time they were together in Philadelphia. But this time we tried them knowingly. 

They are all vegan, and spoiler, amazing. The dough has a croissant like flakiness that makes you want to eat multiples in one sitting. The cantaloupe flavor was very subtle. The almond joy had chocolate frosting, almond slivers, and coconut sprinkled on top. The frosting had a graininess that is to be expected will all vegan frostings, but the chocolate flavor was very good. I can't wait to try more flavors next time I'm in Philadelphia (or hear about more flavors from my sister, I'm glad I don't live that close otherwise I'd be getting them way too often!) I'd say 4.5/5 for the canteloupe and 4/5 for the almond joy.