Wattle Park Bakery sits at the far end of Kensington road, just as the altitude starts to slowly increase as you move into the foothills surrounding Adelaide. A charming neighbourhood of leafy avenues, beautiful reserves and picturesque Australian homes bring to mind images of neighbourhood barbecues, children playing street soccer in the summer evenings and dog walkers politely nodding to their neighbours.
Just before the main road ceased, on the right, was a small plaza with the same font announcing shops, bakeries, I think a post office and whatever else useful plaza might have. The small bakery, unusually quiet for a lunch time rush, had a small selection of donuts available. Opting for the sprinkled one, in keeping with the rest of the blogs, it struck me – how does such a small bakery conjure up so many different fresh goods?
Now, this might seem a touch silly that after 9 months of blogging this has only just occurred to me. With some American naivety I thought that every day a poor baker in the back slaved away frying donuts for the sweet cravings of patrons. But on this day I realised not all bakeries must cook their donuts fresh! How many donuts have I reviewed thus far that have potentially come from other bakeries? From here on out it’s a question I shall ask, for I only feel it’s right that the heroes of this blog should be the hands that crafted.
So let the record show, the donuts from Wattle Bakery are from Rheinland Bakery and we appreciate the service they do for our city.
Aesthetics —7
It was an averaged sized donut with a white vanilla frosting and a generous smattering of sprinkles which nearly had equal coverage. The dough was light, golden brown. The sides were slightly swollen, with a small central hole, but still nicely round.
Topping —7.5
The icing was much thicker than usual, preventing runniness but also moist enough so as not to crack. The flavour of the icing? Vanilla. Wonderfully simple vanilla. It wasn’t overly sweet, it didn’t taste like preservatives, it just tasted like vanilla icing. The icing covered the donut well and evenly. The only negative to the icing was that the sprinkles were a bit on the soft side, perhaps a bit stale and could have been fresher and crunchier.
Dough —7
The dough had an immediate nice and yeasty taste, with a good balance between sweet and salty. As soon as it hit the tongue it was very pleasing, however, there then came an aftertaste to the dough which oddly tasted almost like soap - and it was hard to shake. Perhaps the oil it was fried in was a bit off - and then that oily glaze stuck around the mouth for longer - but without that aftertaste, the dough could have easily reached a 9.
Texture —7.5
The icing was a good texture, smooth and thick as described although more crunch in the sprinkles would have improved the experience. The dough was just a touch on the side of being dry and had no crunch to it’s fried shell. The dough did have a good chewiness with a great amount of spring, i.e. a near perfect density. A bit more crunch would have been a winning donut.
Overall
7.3
Worthy Contender
There is great potential to this donut. The pricing is more expensive than your typical donut at $4 which I find it hard to justify - however this may be reflective of the area and being an external donut source.
