If you want to score a treat for yourself during the craziness of last-minute gift pickup, take a drive to Peddler’s Village. The craft-focused outdoor mall in Bucks County has lots of great presents, but it also offers the best option for mid-shopping self care: the chance to steal over to nearby Stockton Market, home of Curiosity Doughnuts.
The weekend-only stand run by Alex Talbot and Aki Kamozawa serves what’ve been widely acknowledged as the best fried dough treats in the region. But there’s also something novel to try.
Talbot and Kamozawa have invented an entirely new kind of donut: the supercake.
If you’re a donut-o-phile, you know the sweet snack comes in a few distinct styles. There’s cake donuts (like what’s offered at FedNuts), yeast donuts (Krispy Kreme) and also crullers (Dunkin’ has ‘em). Curiosity traditionally has only sold the yeast kind, but this year added the new invention.
So what exactly is it?
A supercake donut is made from a blend of regular cake donut batter and pâte à choux, the kind of dough used for crullers (and other French pastries like cream puffs).
“They work synergistically,” Talbot said, “to make a donut that is, to our taste, better than either one on its own.”
Lofty claim, but the proof is in the pudding. Truly, because eating a supercake donut is almost like enjoying pudding in solid form.
Pick up a supercake and it feels like a normal donut. But bite in and it almost dissolves on contact, becoming a creamy, sugary blend of glaze and pastry. It disappears in a puff of sweet bliss — if you can make a supercake last more than 30 seconds after you take that first nibble, it’d be an impressive feat.
The science behind the airy-but-rich texture comes from double-leavening: baking soda for the cake batter, and puffs of steam for the pâte à choux.
When you hear the flavors Talbot’s come up with, supercakes get even more compelling: peppermint patty, butter pecan, grape pistachio, black and white malted, breakfast essentials (milk-coffee-banana-cornflakes) and tons more.
There’s also a version that’s basically donut inception. Called “coffee and donut on a donut,” it sees a supercake coated in a milk frosting, draped with coffee glaze and topped with grated shreds of a roasted donut-white chocolate fudge.
Curiosity Doughnuts is open 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m, Saturday and Sundays (including Dec. 23 and 24). Only 36 supercakes — $3 each and entirely worth it — are made each day.
