Who knew eh?
That the quaint and touristy Kent town of Rochester would lap up the weird and wonderful doughnut brain farts of me and Bruno. But they did. They were even banging on the door for us to open (we were slightly behind schedule) and at intervals throughout the day, there were even queues out of the door until we sold out. Imagine!
I spent at least one day a year in Rochester when I was a kid growing up in the backwaters of Kent, and that was inevitably for the Dickens festival; a strange spectacle whereby many of the shop owners and locals dress up in Dickensian garb for the day. I harbour some pretty warped memories of Miss Faversham forever sat, gathering cobwebs and dust in one of the shop fronts.
I never thought I’d ever return to appear behind one of those shopfronts myself.
Funny how things turn out.
When a friend took a lease on a tiny but beautiful shop to open a cake and coffee shop I planned to visit, of course I did, but almost a year went by in which I simply couldn’t find the time. Eventually, forced my visit by suggesting we collaborate on a doughnut takeover at his cafe. We put it off for too long, struggling to collide diaries, but eventually we put our lives aside and went for it. As sometimes you just have to do.
I’m so pleased we did, for as tiring as it was. And it was exhausting; I have absolutely zero desire to work in a kitchen full time; an evening of dough prep was crushingly rapidly followed by an early morning of more prep, then hours spent in front of a deep fat fryer and piping fillings. Well, you get the idea. It was also fantastically rewarding, exhilarating, adrenaline pumping fun.
Believe it or not, and I had no idea how they’d go down – if they’d even sell, it was the sweet and savoury beasties that went down the best and if we do it all again I think we’ll focus on these and expand our range. Maple glazed doughnuts were stuffed with fried streaky bacon and either a fried egg or a huge smear of peanut butter. There was one wonderful lady who enjoyed hers so much she returned for a second immediately after her first. Respect.
100 doughnuts in total may not seem much but I can assure you it’s much, much harder than making the odd batch at home and I’m immensely proud we somehow managed to pull it off.
We also has pistachio and cherry and black pepper.
There was hazelnut and raspberry.
Coffee, cardamom, rum with a little orange zest.
Finally, there were little bags of sugar dusted, spicy ‘nduja filled doughnut holes
Oh, and there were also blueberry fritters and deep fried cheesecake.
Bruno and I shared one of the savoury doughnuts at the very beginning of service and then I had a quiet moment with one of the pistachio and cherry beauts at the end, covered in sugar and reaching of oil. Health.
A couple of Twitter faces turned up and took some much better photos than I was able to – thanks to
Maybe we’ll see you at the next one…..
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