Retro carbs: gourmet doughnuts, cupcakes — just like mom use to make
From in front of the traditional glass cases at Top Pot Doughnuts, Larry Pearl's voice booms up the winding staircase past heads hunched over laptops to announce:
"I haven't had a doughnut in five years!"
If it were true, Pearl would be a rarity. Doughnuts — and that hot new taste trap, cupcakes — have been booming, say some local bakeries.
But as Pearl sinks his teeth into an old-fashioned glaze — "The sweetest thing you ever could have," he says, "but that's the point, fat with sugar on it" — he recalls it hasn't really been that long since he had a doughnut because he's tasted Krispy Kremes.
"But this is great. It's just as good as I remember."
So what's up with doughnuts, anyway? Especially upscale doughnuts and upscale cupcakes, which are carving out a "Seattle-style" niche — meaning relatively healthful ingredients served with quality atmosphere and dynamite coffee. How does that reconcile with our image of good health?
One local nutrition expert says we are drawn to doughnuts and cupcakes by the evolutionary pull that survival wasn't just of the fittest but of those who could find calorie-dense foods. Doughnuts and cupcakes are cheap, comforting and convenient.
The owners of some of Seattle's top shops see a different kind of evolution — quality. Their sales of old-fashioned desserts are booming, they say, because people are more conscious of what they eat but also want a balance of pleasure and good health.
Sit on a plastic seat under fluorescent lights to gobble down a doughnut fried in any type of oil? Never! But customers will linger over something with natural ingredients that tastes as if grandma cooked it from scratch.
"People have come from North Carolina to visit us," says Ryan Kellner, owner of Mighty-O Donuts in Tangle Town near Green Lake, which uses a nonhydrogenated organic palm fruit shortening, no animal products, no artificial ingredients and no preservatives.
"We were stalked like the Space Needle because we're a vegan doughnut shop."
A healthier doughnut? Yes. Health food? No, sir.
"People get confused on that," Kellner says. "They're healthier than other doughnuts, but they're doughnuts through and through."
You won't find people on low-carb diets over at Cupcake Royale in Madrona, either. But you will find people who eat European style. That is, taking their time in a nice setting and enjoying the best but with smaller portions.
Lemon butter cream made with real lemons. San Francisco's Guittard chocolate in the cake and the frosting.
"It's been a long time since people had a good scratch cupcake with real butter frosting," says Jody Hall, who can elicit the same response as the bell to Pavlov's dog just by talking about her cupcakes over the phone.
The list of artificial ingredients in most cupcakes wraps around the container, says Hall, but not at Cupcake Royale, which is located inside Vérité Coffee. There, you can count the ingredients on one hand: flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla and butter.
"It's an indulgence, for sure, but also made of healthy ingredients."
Hall and her business partner, Kim Thomas, both learned marketing and how to draw a good cup of coffee at Starbucks. Hall wanted to get away from corporate life and own a coffee shop "but not the 743rd coffee shop," she says.
She knew that Magnolia Bakery in Manhattan has people snaked around the block to get great cupcakes. So she and Thomas decided to do with cupcakes what Hall feels Top Pot does with doughnuts, which is "go back to the original way doughnuts are made."
Also like Top Pot, they wanted retro atmosphere. Pink cupcake boxes. Each hand-frosted cupcake placed on granite pedestals behind old-fashioned glass cases. It's routine to see customers do the "cupcake dance" of delight, she says.
Customer Sheryl Jardine, who came in for a cup of coffee with her little boy, was enticed to indulge by Dylan and by the chocolate cupcake behind the glass.
"The frosting is heavenly. The cake is really light and fluffy."
And it brought back warm memories of baking cupcakes with her mother to take to school, which is exactly what the new shops are trying to capture.
Eat one cupcake or one doughnut occasionally and "good luck to you, no problem," says Adam Drewnowski, director for the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington.
"But if we consume several cupcakes and doughnuts all day, everyday for a year, bad things start happening," Drewnowski says.
Substituting such things for nutrition is a double whammy for children because they don't appreciate the issue of health and are driven by taste, he says.
And, yet, how can we fight our primal urges? We are drawn to calorie-rich food because throughout evolution such things as honey and animal fat were hard to find.
"It isn't that the industry gives us something we don't want and that we'd rather have broccoli," says Drewnowski. "The industry gives us exactly what we want and at a good price."
Yes, but there's such a thing as balance, says Michael Klebeck, an owner of Top Pot, who should write a book on Zen and the art of doughnuts.
His two shops make reference back to the 1940s when people put more care into what they did and "fast food was not even a word yet." He backs up the atmosphere, he feels, with a "hand-forged" doughnut so customers can "taste the integrity."
"People want that touchstone of having that authentic experience and they're willing to pay for it," Klebeck says.
The balance in his view are the people who work in a nearby health club. They work out regularly but they also treat themselves to doughnuts — not a dozen, but one or maybe two made from "real ingredients."
Outside in the sunshine, Pearl, the Top Pot customer, also talks balance. Some people will care that they can feel their belt tighten on the third bite. Some people won't.
"The people who don't care will live longer anyway," he says, "because they're less stressed."
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