craftygal stump - The art of a perfect, hot, original glazed Krispy Kreme

The Krispy Kreme-ifesto

As a child, I’d listen to my father and his siblings talk about Krispy Kremes. They had grown fond of them as children themselves when they went back down South to visit family. They tell these fantastic stories of staying in a hotel on the strip in Myrtle Beach, and each morning there would be a knock at their door followed by the muffled words, "Krispy Kraems?" Each gives it their best thick Southern accent while wide grins spread across their faces. Inevitably, although we know the answer, one of the nieces or nephews asks, "They delivered them door-to-door back then?" To be honest, that is one of the few questions that can be followed by a "back then" add-on without ruffling some feathers. (In this context, we are referring to something that was actually better when they were children, not worse, so apparently, "back then" is acceptable.)

Since we grew up in New York and were sadly Krispy Kreme deficient for too long, one-by-one the various families took vacations to the Carolinas, and that was where we were introduced to the King of all doughnuts. We would travel down in the spring or summer for a weeklong vacation, and we were lucky if we still fit in our swimsuits by the end of each trip. My sister and I could eat a whole box at breakfast between the two of us, and still look at one another and back at the bottom of the glaze-dripped box utterly flabbergasted that they were gone already.

And those boxes! Those beautiful flat, white boxes with green polka dots, and the red insignia emblazoned across the top and sides. How wonderful it is that their company colors are red and green. As children, we learned that all good things come in the red and green season, so this was a small way for that notion to permeate our world-view.

Years after that first real doughnut passed over my lips and into my heart, I read that they were going public and expanding their customer base. Oh how I hoped. Then, a couple months later, I saw a Krispy Kremes Coming Soon sign outside of one of our local grocery stores. Success! My master plan had come to pass. Systematic destruction of all other doughnut stores by the one true doughnut maker. It was as if the trumpets had blasted and the walls were finally crumbling.

As various folks in and around the office counted down the days for the promised land of doughnuts to open, I tried to wait patiently. A week before they opened, we picked up some grocery store doughnuts for a little inner-office move we’d been anticipating. I think that was the last time I’ll ever eat a donut. I find myself defending the honor of the Krispy Kreme Original Glazed over and over again, so let me set forth, once and for all, why this doughnut has the right to wear the crown.

It is time for the Krispy Kreme Original Glazed doughnut to rise up and take its rightful place as King of the doughnut heap. Too long we have suffered under the crumbly, flaky regime of Prince Dunkin’ Donut or Princess Mister Donut. These baked and fried confections can not even rightfully be called doughnuts; they are donuts, as in do not, as in do not eat. I believe if everyone in the world could eat just one Original Glazed piping hot, fresh off the conveyor, we would no longer suffer under such asinine observations as, "It’s just a doughnut."

The Krispy Kreme Original Glazed doughnut is not "just a doughnut." It is a masterpiece. It is the culmination of two things very rarely found in one food item: light and sweet. The Original Glazed is so light and fluffy that it is easy to eat several, yay even a whole box, all by oneself. But, it is so sweet, that you are stopped from completely gorging yourself. It is a beautiful mechanism. Do you see the perfection?? The thing you love, perhaps have devoted your whole life to, cannot kill you. Well, I’m sure it could kill you, but each time you nearly put yourself over the edge, as you dangle on the precipice of sugar shock, you go into autopilot and hand stops feeding mouth.

All things good and perfect in the world have a secret, do they not? It is best that we do not know the secret recipe that makes this Original Glazed doughnut so good. I’m sure it has something to do with the dough, but I dare you to watch the glaze waterfall just once on what the Krispy Kreme’s web site calls the Doughnut Theater, and not be hooked. I’ll tell you what the secret ingredient is, it’s magic. The magic that comes when a doughnut store can take hardened corporate America in one door, waltz them past said Doughnut Theater, and send them out the other door with child-like wonder restored in their hearts.

Don't forget to 'open' the Krispy Kreme box.