Dipped

Bakery: Dipped
Address: 161 Baldwin St #1, Toronto ON
Website: https://www.dippeddonuts.ca/
Style: Doughnuts
Price: $$$-$$$$ 

Dipped is a newer addition to downtown Toronto's gourmet doughnut scene. Located in a hole-in-the-wall space at the edge of Kensington Market, they - like most gourmet doughnut shops - specialize in various flavours of well, dip, most of which are topped with some sort of decoration and feature the same plain doughnut base. In addition, they also have one or two filled doughnuts. At the time of purchase, Dipped had a few unique glaze flavours (most was already sold out, so I'm not sure how much they really have at peak capacity), but testing the deliciousness of a doughnut in all its parts is best with a more neutral doughnut - so why are they the same price as everything else? It's not fair!

 Like I said, the more neutral the doughnut the better for seeing how it fares; I had the vanilla cardamom ($3.25). The key to any doughnut is the dough and the dough here was big and fluffy with no distinct flavour and no sign of the chewiness I love in great doughnuts. From all my gourmet doughnut trips, this one most resembled a Tim Hortons doughnut... and that's not the most flattering of comparisons. The glaze, though good in taste, was way too thin and barely covered the top, definitely not substantial enough for the amount of dough; as such, you could barely taste it. It would have been so much better if the dough, for example, had cardamom mixed right into it.

I really couldn't resist the berry bomb (an outrageous $4.00). It looked so pretty, but was a bit of a disaster to actually eat. Good thing that cardboard box was there! This was cut open and stuffed to the point of bursting with a flavourful berry filling. This was then topped with a bit of granola clusters. Unlike the dipped doughnuts, the dough was dense and resembled Italian bombolini. I wasn't the biggest fan.

I'd been looking forward to visiting this doughnut shop for a few months, but in the end it just didn't live up to my expectations. Good, but should/could have been much better.

Rating: **1/2