Delight Donuts

We are now three days into our Utah trip (we're actually in Utah now) and have sampled five different doughnut places. Today, I will be posting about the second one we visited: Delight Donuts. Delight Donuts is in Kearney, Nebraska. My dad described it as a "Chinese doughnut shop"; there was a Buddha statue in the corner, which I unfortunately do not have a picture of. I do have a couple pictures of the outside, though:

The sign outside the shop. Plus a convertible.

DONUT

Our official overall scores for Delight Donuts are:

Average Doughnut Score: 14.4/15

Average Restaurant Score: 27/30

It scored very highly on everything. My parents especially were big fans.

Now the doughnuts! No pictures, sorry. (My parents and Amelia are all taking pictures, but Amelia's aren't sending to me, for some reason.) We only bought two types (standard glaze and chocolate glaze), but that was plenty because they were huge. I guess the winner was the chocolate glazed, at 14.5/15, but the other one scored a 14.3/15, so it wasn't a huge margin of victory.

Comments:

Restaurant:

Sandra's Take: "I like it."

Mom's/Amy's Take: I wasn't expecting it to be as good as it was. I would go there again. "We all got out and used their bathrooms, spent seven minutes discussing our order in front of their counter and then only ordered three doughnuts and they were still nice to us!"

Molly's Take (do I put this in quotes? I'm technically not quoting myself, but I'm also not paraphrasing myself): "I am not as big a fan of Delight Donuts as the rest of my family. Their doughnuts were good, but they were very standard doughnuts, which aren't my favorite. Although they did have a bunch of exciting frosting colors, none of which we bought."

Standard glaze:

Mom's/Amy's Take: "Ideal. . . .The size on those ones is nice."

Molly's Take: "I thought they were doughnut holes for nine hours until Mom finally corrected me."

Chocolate glaze:

Mom's/Amy's Take: "The glaze isn't quite there."

And a bonus story! We also visited the Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park in North Platte, Nebraska.

None of us are touching the bridge's railing because it was super hot and we didn't want to get burned.

Sandra's expression is that of an authentic Wild West cowgirl.

Smith's expression is also very authentic. If you're not looking carefully, you could mistake him for Buffalo Bill riding Old Buckskin.

Mom's/Amy's Take: "We decided we needed to tie this into our doughnut theme, so we made up a story about how Annie Oakley would shoot the middles out of biscuits during her sharpshooting act to make doughnuts. This story loses something in writing it down--it was quite entertaining in person."

Sandra's Take: "North Platte? That's in Oregon Trail!"

Olsen's Bake Shop

Readers, I have not been totally honest with you. I told you that Skouson Skitchen was becoming a foodie blog, but what I didn't tell you was that it is also becoming a travel blog. Sort of. A foodie travel blog. Kind of like Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, but with more children. Or at least I assume so. I've never actually watched Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.

...Anyway! Today was the first day of our trip to Utah. We stopped at three different doughnut places, which I will report on in three separate posts. Number one on the list is Olsen's Bake Shop in Omaha, Nebraska, which we visited approximately five minutes after it opened. We could smell the baking all the way down the street. The shop has been owned by the same family since 1942; one of the women who works there is over 80 years old.

I should briefly explain the rating system. Sandra created it so that we rate the doughnuts on their flavor, texture, freshness, and appearance and the restaurants on their aura/general feeling, aesthetic, service, cleanliness, and overall doughnut quality. She made a fancy chart that we fill out (although we've been using it slightly differently than she intended. But it's basically the same):

Sandra spells "donut" the short way. I sometimes do too, but I'm trying to stay consistent for the sake of the blog, so doughnut it is.

Now for our official overall scores for Olsen's Bake Shop:

Average Doughnut Score: 11.8/15

Average Restaurant Score: 21.4/30

Aaaand pictures!

This is our whole family standing outside the shop. You can see people in the doorway. They are not going through the door. They are the end of the line. This is evidently a very popular donut place.

This picture makes wonderful use of foreground, middle ground and background. It's too bad we all look really strange.

Sandra looks really excited about these doughnuts. Amelia looks like her nose itches.

Mmm. Those are some beautiful doughnuts.

We bought seven doughnuts from Olsen's: a cruller, a chocolate-covered cream-filled doughnut, a kolach (which I thought was spelled "colache" until just now), a blueberry cake doughnut, and three Danishes (lemon, cherry, and apricot). The highest-scoring one was the cream-filled, at 12.5/15; the lowest-scoring was the cake doughnut, at 10.3/15.

Comments that are either really insightful or really funny or both because you can't make an insightful comment about a doughnut without being funny (also, I'm paraphrasing unless I use quotation marks):

Cruller:

Mom's/Amy's Take: It has kind of an eggy aftertaste. But maybe doughnuts aren't supposed to have an aftertaste because as soon as you finish one, you move on to another one.

Cream-filled:

Sandra's Take: The chocolate glaze wasn't glossy enough.

Mom's/Amy's Take: "Tastes a little metallic."

Apricot Danish:

Mom's/Amy's Take: "Scrummy." She is apparently quoting the Great British Baking Show.

Amelia's Take: "Squishy."

Kolach:

Amelia's Take: "I think this is pie filling. That doesn't mean it doesn't taste good, though. . . .It looked kind of like it was filled with blood instead of cherries."

Cherry Danish:

Lucy's Take: "Delicious, yummy, and six."

Mom's/Amy's Take: I didn't really like the frosting flavor.

Lemon Danish:

Amelia's Take:"It looks like a doughnut, it looks like it tastes good, but it still looks like a hot dog."

Dad's Take: "It tasted like Snack Pack."

Everyone Else's Take: It really did look like a hot dog.

Smith has not commented much. I will have to make sure to get his opinion from now on.

Summer of the Doughnut

Hello! This is not Amy. This is her daughter Molly, now 18 years old! I'm going to be taking over the blog this summer because it is the... drumroll, please...

SUMMER OF THE DOUGHNUT

If you hadn't guessed from the title of this post.

What this means is that this summer, our family will be visiting as many doughnut places as possible, rating both the restaurants and the doughnuts, and posting about it on Skouson Skitchen! I'm blogging (and webmastering and all that jazz), Sandra developed the rating system and is going to keep score, and Amelia is our official photographer!

What this actually means is that Skouson Skitchen is no longer a cooking blog. It is now a foodie blog. Hold onto your hats, readers. It's going to be a wild ride.


Mom's/Amy's Take (which I totally stole from her post on Facebook): So I may have had the worst idea ever. We've driven between Iowa and Utah umpteen times now. We've stopped at every easy pit stop numerous times. The truth of it is that Nebraska and Wyoming just don't have that much to offer along I-80. Last Sunday I was trying to come up with a new gimmick and hit on the idea of doing a doughnut testing contest at various locations along our route. My kids REALLY liked the idea. Sandra came up with a rating system, Molly reworked our old Skouson Skitchen blog for the summer of doughnuts and Amelia signed on as photographer. This may be epic. The odd thing is that I don't even really like doughnuts. I blame Fast Sunday.