Visited 28/12/2018
**Dairy Free Approved/ Vegan Approved**
2 James St, Burleigh Heads QLD 4220, Australia
I’ll preface this post with a warning: Doughnuts are one of my favorite food groups so if I seem overly passionate about deep fried bread, it’s because I am.
I had my first introduction to ‘Doughnut Time‘ in 2017, Sydney.
In 2017, well over a year since my last doughnut due to my diet overhaul, I was frantic for a fix. At the time, there were no vegan doughnuts in my vicinity, so with hopes of land being greener on the other side, I began searching for them before my trip to Sydney. The most popular result online was Doughnut Time. At the time, they even had 2 locations open in really accessible places. I headed there at the first opportunity and then at the second opportunity; by the time I returned back home, I’d consumed 6 whole doughnuts over 2 days. The days following, I raved about it at anyone who would listen, telling them Doughnut Time’s vegan doughnuts were the best doughnuts I’d ever had.
It should then come as no surprise that the only goal I needed to accomplish in the Gold Coast was to go back to Doughnut Time. Boy was I in luck, the first Gold Coast location opened just 1 month prior to my arrival, minutes away from where I was to lodge. It’s like I have an affinity with Doughnut Time. I walked towards the store with a skip in my step, the happiest person alive. I squealed when I caught a glimpse of the fluorescent sign and fast-walked the rest of the way. I stood outside the store just taking it all in for a while and taking countless pictures. I remember thinking to myself that Doughnut Time has had a glow-up, the other locations I’d been to were smaller store stands, but this was a proper operation equipped with a kitchen in the back and in-store seating. The decor was so on brand: colorful, pink and bright, mirroring the aesthetic of it’s Sydney location. It had me feeling like nothing had changed in the year since my last visit. I was about to get the rudest awakening.
My favorite doughnut, ‘The Teaches Of Peaches’, with its thin sweet glaze and pillowy yeast spring was nowhere to be seen but that alone didn’t dampen my excitement. There were 2 vegan offerings, a hundreds and thousands sprinkled doughnut called ‘Fairy Godmother’ and the sugary monstrosity which I’d avoided in Sydney, the Liam Hemsworthy. As someone who prefers simplistic, glazed doughnuts, I was a bit disappointed with my options but as long as the dough is soft and not cAkE like, I’d eat it happily. I handed over a hefty $24 dollars before rushing home carefully with my 4 doughnuts; I got 2 of each vegan flavor.
I made myself a cup of orange cinnamon tea before getting tucked in. Up close, they looked delectable, toppings loaded high off the top and cream glistening when it caught the light. Eagerly, I picked up the Fairy Godmother and bit into it but something had gone horribly wrong. One of Doughnut Time’s promises is their doughnuts are made fresh daily and if the doughnut I had was of their fresh quality, I wouldn’t dare dream about how their not-fresh doughnut is like.
The Fairy Godmother was bordering on stale and was doughy, little crumbs flaking off the exposed insides where I’d taken a bite. There were lots of little air pockets but nothing about this doughnut was airy, it was so dense. Even the outer fried layer was separating from the rest of the dough, I could have peeled it cleanly off if I’d wanted to and I haven’t seen that happen even in the cheapest of doughnuts. It’s only saving grace was the cream which can’t possibly be stale anyways, it had a lemon citrusy twang and an unnoticeable graininess. I will also give props to the sprinkles as it was un-soggy. I think this was unfortunately a really bad yeast doughnut and not just a horrible attempt at a cake doughnut.
I hadn’t been excited for the Liam Hemsworthy and was even less excited now; Fairy Godmother’s magic has had an upsetting effect on me. I started first on the shards, which were soft, dark chocolate cookies. It wasn’t overly sweet or stale, thankfully. I could see myself happily eating those as-is. The salty chocolate-caramel glaze was tempered well, snapping as it should. The speckled cream was also quite good, tasting of salted vanilla with an chocolate aftertaste. It had an interesting hardened moussey hold that was compact but also soft to bite into, it’s crystallized outer layer providing a nice textural crunch.
That’s where the compliments end, I think this was most likely supposed to be a cake doughnut and although the dough wasn’t dry, it was by no means soft, somehow even more dense than the Fairy Godmother. The only thing the denseness helped with is the overwhelming sugary effect the toppings had on me altogether. I could not finish the whole doughnut in one sitting, I was over it after 1/2 but powered through till I’d finished 3/4.
I was googling for a reason why Doughnut Time have become this way and came across countless articles of how they struggled financially due to rapid over expansion and how its been handed over to someone new. The new website emphasized that tweaking was done to the recipes in the midst of the handover and I think that’s where the difference in my Sydney VS Gold Coast experience lies. I’m so very sad that I no longer have Doughnut Time to look forward to during my trips to Australia and wish that perhaps in the future, when I decide to try it again, it will have redeemed some of its former glory. However for now, I’ll put off promoting Doughnut Time to my peers and to you.
DF NAVI 