Sunday, October 08, 2006

Voodoo Revisited #3

Continued from Part 2

With the vow renewal behind us, Mrs. Blognut and I had two full days left in Portland with nothing left to do but celebrate by scarfing down as many Northwest Nuts as possible. And we didn’t waste any time. Before returning to our hotel the night of the ceremony, Tres made sure we had plenty of Voodoo to accompany our Dominic Doughnut (aka: best Doughnut of all time). He stuffed a box with a random assortment of Nuts and handed it to us on the way out. We said our goodbyes and thanked him for remarrying us beneath a giant Holy Doughnut, promising to return the next day for another batch of Nuts. As I mentioned in Part 2, that night we dined on Dominic. Three out of the five Doughnuts Tres had packed for us were topped with cereal, so we thought it best to save them for the morning.
So the next day we got up at sunrise (still on NYC time), called room service for a pot of Peet’s and opened our big pink box of Nuts. We started with the Triple Chocolate Penetration. It was absolutely insane - moist and dense devil’s food cake, rich and creamy chocolate frosting, and a massive collection of Cocoa Puffs stuck on top form a gooey hunk of chocolate decadence. I don’t know if it was the sugar, or the caffeine hiding in all the chocolate, but after finishing the TCP I felt like I’d mainlined a gallon of espresso. I was seriously running around the room like a rabid monkey (and I now knew where Tres gets all his mad energy from). The only downfall of this magnificent Nut was the slightly-stale Puffs. But I’m sure this was due to the fact that it had been nearly 18 hours since this TCP had been made. Cereal can only be exposed to air for so long before going bad, you know?

Not long after I came down from my frenzied sugar-haze, we bit into our second Nut of the morning – the Bloop Loops. Definitely the most colorful selection offered by Voodoo, the Bloop is a frosted yeast-raised Doughnut topped with loads of Fruit Loops (again, through no fault of Voodoo, mostly stale). If there’s one thing sweeter (sweet like sugar-sweet, not like “rad”) than a bunch of Cocoa Puffs stuck on a Doughnut, it’s a bunch of Fruit Loops stuck on a Doughnut. The light and airy yeast dough tried to bring the flavor down to earth, but went nearly unnoticed in the setting of such an intense sugar-overload. This Nut had me right back in the throws of hyperglycemic delusion and tasted every bit as good as its chocolate predecessor. It was arguably the sweetest thing I’ve ever eaten.

I lied about the Bloop Loops being the sweetest thing I’ve ever eaten. The Captain Crunch Doughnut (see above) was by far the sweetest thing I’ve had. Essentially identical to the Bloop, but with Captain Crunch’s Crunch Berries instead of Loops, this Nut was the most challenging yet. You know those pure maple sugar candies you get in places like Vermont or Western New York? And you know how they’re so sweet that after two bites your mouth starts to tingle and you’re in desperate need of a glass of salt water? Well this was sweeter. I tried analyzing the taste and producing some sort of description for you, the Blognut reader – but was only able to retain intermittent snippets of flavor in between waves of ensuing sugar shock. An occasional glint of creamy vanilla frosting with a periodic burst of faux-berry from the Crunch, but mostly just SUGAR! I was only able to stomach a few bites before I ceded victory and returned it to its home in the pink box. It would take three sessions spread throughout the day before I was able to finish it.

At this point things this got less exciting. But the simplicity of our last two Nuts was a welcome change after having downed three gaudy cereal-based varieties. The tiny Blueberry Cake tasted like DD’s Nut of the same name, but with a stronger blueberry pop, like the kind you get from those sugary canned berries in boxes of muffin mix. The Maple Bar also mimicked Dunkin’s version: soft and airy yeast-raised dough with an intensely maple frosting. Both were delicious.
So having eaten five Dougnuts that day, plus a few bites of Dominic, we decided to hold off on any more Nuts until the following day. We spent the afternoon downing hoppy Rogue Ales and contemplating which Voodoo selections to try next.

Rogue Ales Distillery and Public House.

Rogue Sampler: Imperial IPA, Brutel Bitter, Uberfest Pilsner and St. Rogue Red (plus underwear).

Doughnut scores:

Triple Chocolate Penetration -


Bloop Loops -


Captain Crunch (I deducted .5 because I'm pretty sure this Nut gave me my first ever cavity) -



Blueberry Cake -

Maple Bar -

No comments: