Chocolate cream filled

One thing I love about Gibson’s Donuts (and there are so many things to love) is finding new doughnuts I haven’t yet sampled at every visit. This week, I tried the chocolate-cream filed doughnut.

This is the basic glazed doughnut filled, and I mean FILLED, with chocolate cream. Nearly every bit of the inside of this doughnut was jam-packed with chocolate. As I was aware of the filling pre-bite, I cut it open (this blog is a non-chewed food zone) to get a photo of the inside of the doughnut to demonstrate the fullness of the filling.

Behold!

Chocolate in every bite!

The chocolate itself was a subtle chocolatey flavor. A milk chocolate with a bit of a chalky (in a good way) taste. Personally, I’m a dark chocolate fan, but chocolate is one of my favorite flavors, and I love it all. The glazed portion of the doughnut was perfection, as always.

This doughnut gets points for being filled to the edge with the chocolate cream filling. I wish the chocolate flavor was a tad more chocolatey, however.

Tastee score: 7

Doughnut news: This Friday is NATIONAL DOUGHNUT DAY, so be sure to visit your favorite doughnut shop. If you’re in Memphis, your favorite doughnut shop is Gibson’s Donuts. If it’s not, then you’re wrong.

I hope to see you there!

Strawberry Shortcake

In celebration of the UK’s Doughnut Week, I enjoyed my second doughnut this week: Gibson’s Donuts’ Doughnut of the Month, the Strawberry Shortcake:

How pretty is this doughnut? See the lovely bits of strawberry peeking through? The decadent cream cheese glaze with the graham cracker (?) crumbled topping? One of the prettiest doughnuts I’ve seen at Gibson’s. My first bite into the doughnut revealed the pale pink cake inside. So delightful!

The strawberry taste was faint (the doughnut itself was the strawberry cake doughnut), but balanced nicely with the cream cheese and topping. I’m a HUGE fan of Gibson’s cream cheese topping, so I would not have been disappointed with a bit more of it. For real, I would eat a big bowl of just their cream cheese topping with a spoon if I could.

Overall, I think the prettiness of this doughnut outweighs its taste. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a tastee doughnut, but I would have liked a smidge more strawberry taste. But perhaps my impression of strawberry shortcake is warped by my memory of the strong smell of the Strawberry Shortcake doll. One time on a family vacation when I was little, I put my Strawberry Shortcake doll and several of her dessert-themed friends in a drawer in the hotel room. The next day, when I went to retrieve them, the smell was way-overpowering. As in, take an antihistamine and cover your nose with a sweatshirt strong. It’s possible that I now mistakenly associate strawberry shortcake with strong sensory experiences. So maybe strawberry shortcake actually should have a lighter strawberry taste? That way, it will not remind us of odoriferous childhood memories.

Tastee score: 7

Doughnuts news: Make sure you celebrate Doughnut Week this week, even if you don’t live in Australia or the UK! Or maybe we should think of every week as doughnut week so we can justify a trip to Gibson’s.

 

Lots o’ cream; lots o’ frosting

Behold all this sugary goodness!

Chocolate glaze, frosting, sprinkles, and on the inside: a delicious creamy vanilla filling! I did not discover the creamy filling until I had taken the first glorious bite. So no photos of the inside because of my refusal to photograph chewed up food.

This is a very pretty doughnut, no? Who doesn’t love sprinkles?? The contrast of the pink against the dark color of the chocolate makes this doughnut all the more enticing.

The eating experience was interesting, however. I heated it up slightly, so after several bites, the frosting on top slid off. But I gotta tell you: I’m not gonna complain about eating straight frosting! With all the sugar-based components, this was a very, very sweet doughnut. Not as sweet as the Jolly Rancher, but still quite sweet.

Part of me wishes there had been more emphasis on doughnut rather than the sugary additions, as all the extra sugary-ness seemed to overpower the delighfulness of Gibson’s glazed doughnut. But I would recommend this doughnut.

Tastee score: 7.

Doughnut news: Remember when a faithful Gibson’s customer tried to make it a drive-through? Gibson’s made lemonade-flavored doughnuts when life handed them lemons: Local Memphis artist Adam Exelbierd painted the boarded up windows:

Aren’t these murals fantastic? I love the splattered look. Check out more of Mr. Exelbierd’s work on his Instagram account.

MORE doughnut news: According to Australia, this week is National Doughnut Week! A whole week dedicated to doughnuts? I fully support this! I think this means a couple of trips to Gibson’s this week. Stay tuned.