Sunday night I was fortunate to catch Wild Goose Creative‘s monthly event Too Many Cooks. In case you’ve never been, the event takes place the second Sunday of every month, and is currently curated by Tania from Tania Explores Columbus. It’s a wonderful chance to connect with a Columbus-area chef, restauranteur, or foodie and learn more about their craft, hear their story, and get to sample what they do. Especially when the sampling includes donuts…
This month featured Heather Morris from Destination Donuts. When I first visited Heather back in November, she was selling her donuts at North Market. She continues to do that regularly, but her donuts can now be found at places like Hills Market, Luck Bros Coffee, Global Gallery, Seventh Son Brewery, Angry Baker, and more (follow her on Facebook to keep track).
Heather spent the evening telling us her story, of restaurant gigs, working as a pastry chef in corporate jobs, and of finally discovering a passion for creating really amazing donuts. As part of her “training,” she spent a week shadowing the folks at Dynamo Donuts in San Francisco, getting a feel for the schedule, equipment, timing, everything she needed to know.
All the while, she and a volunteer fried and glazed a couple different types of donut holes.
She used this as an opportunity to talk about her process of making donuts, and all the trial and error it took to figure out her recipes, ingredient combinations, timing, equipment.
First up, she fried some lemon poppyseed donut holes, with a lightly sweet glaze. These donuts are a little larger than the typical chain restaurant donut holes, which makes them a bigger snack while not committing you to eating a large circular donut. Really, I’m just trying to justify eating a dozen of these.
Deliciousness in progress.
Her second donut used fresh strawberries in the batter.
They rolled it in vanilla sugar. She makes use of her leftover vanilla bean pods by dropping them in the sugar, which soaks up the sweet and smoky flavors.
These, too, were excellent. Nice soft center with tiny slices of strawberry, with a gritty crunch from the sugar coating. Heather knows how to fry these babies just right, so they’re soft without being oil-soaked.
This donut is ready for its close-up.
Heather’s story embodies the reason why I really love doing Breakfast With Nick. She’s following her passion and putting in long hours to working hard toward it, and creating a fantastic product that people love. I appreciate watching and being inspired by entrepreneurs who put their passion to work and make our city a more enjoyable place. Also, I get to eat donuts.
