Crosstown Doughnuts, Sea Salt Caramel & Banana

The area where I work is tantalizingly close to many cool food markets at lunch time, but just far enough away that getting there would almost always be a risk to my hour long break. That's why I was so excited when I saw on Twitter that Bishopsgate was to have it's own market - I'm quite near there, so huzzah!

I was doubly excited that a dougnhutterie I've heard much about had a van there - so I headed out, first day. When it comes to retrieving doughnuts, french fries, or burgers...I'll walk fast. I think I knocked over a few pedestrians on my way. Hey, thems the breaks when there is a new doughnut place around me - they should've known.

There was a great variety of flavors available, and you can see them all on the Crosstown Doughnuts website. My eye was immediately drawn to the salted caramel variety, and the addition of banana basically made me tent my fingers and laugh evilly. The friendly fellow manning the van let me know that it was the very last one, so my fate was sealed. I live by one rule; if there is only one left of something - get it.

So I scurried away with my sea salt caramel & banana doughnut, and sat at one of the provided tables. It's a very nice market, by the way! Lots of seating, and of course some of the best vans I know of all in one place...conveniently located near me, best of all.

I felt a bit silly taking pictures of a doughnut all by myself, but I know that taking pictures of your food is quite the 'in thing' these days. I do it, but then I also will write about that food - does that make me better, or worse? Frankly, I think people should take pictures of whatever they want and we should all stop judging each other based off the perceived quality of our Instagram feeds.

Back to the doughnut - I hadn't realized while I was eating or when I bought it, but it's meant to be a chocolate dough base. In my experience, it's quite hard to imbue doughnut batter with the taste of chocolate, unless it's a cake doughnut. It was the same here, with the doughnut tasting most like a regular, if not delicious yeast-raised doughnut. You don't need to tart a good doughnut up with too many extra flavors, anyway, especially when you've got a solid cream or topping. This doughnut had both!

The topping is salted caramel & chocolate 'soil', which seems to be crumbled dark chocolate cookies, there is also a bit of a caramel-flavored frosting, probably to keep the salted caramel sauce on. The salted caramel was delicious, as usual, not too sweet & and sticky textured - without any need to chew, and no tooth-sticking. Really perfect stuff!

The filling was banana, which had a bit of a gel/cream texture to it. It wasn't purely whipped up banana cream, as it's legitimately made from banana. You know when you pulverize a banana it has a certain texture? It's like that, mixed with a bit of cream and smoothed out. It tasted very natural, just like a sweetened banana. I don't know if it was actually sweetened, or if it just tasted sweeter based off of the caramel, but either way the smooth banana filling was just lovely.

I'm looking forward to trying more Crosstown Doughnuts! I had my eye on a couple more; the Creme Brulee and the Peanut Butter & Currant doughnuts, specifically. Check 'em out on the site!

You can find Crosstown Doughnuts at the new Bishopsgate Market on Tuesdays & Wednesdays, and at Leather Lane Market every weekday. I highly recommend you seek them out, and follow them on Twitter - they're out and about in London, and some of their doughnuts are stocked at various coffee shops around the city, too.