Baseball and Doughnuts (Doughnut Plant)

Oatmeal Doughnut

While the end of September means that the days are getting depressingly shorter and the weather is becoming ever cooler, there is one thing that is actually great about this time of year: the start of the MLB playoffs. While my Mariners haven't made the playoffs since 2001 and came no closer to making it this year thanks to an epic 17 game losing streak, playoff baseball still gets me excited in a way that no other sport can. And with the dramatic and absolutely improbable way that the regular season ended, I think that the playoffs will be just as exhilarating and fun to watch.

What do doughnuts and baseball have to do with each other? Hmm well, hitters often like to put ring-shaped weights called "doughnuts" on their bats for warm-up swings, thereby making the bat feel lighter once they take the weight off when they go up to hit, though recent research has shown that this practice may actually be counterproductive. And um, I guess the Mariners' popgun offense puts up a lot of doughnuts (zeros) on the scoreboard. But while the Mariners' hitters give us a bunch of unwanted doughnuts on the scoreboard, the doughnuts from Doughnut Plant are most certainly something I can't get enough of.

Despite the ridiculous amount of useless Adobe Flash incorporated into their website (is it really necessary to have doughnuts rolling across the screen each time you click on a link?), I had heard great things about Doughnut Plant and had even tried a couple of bites of their Blackout and Pistachio cake doughnuts (both were spot on). I dropped by in the late afternoon, so many of their more popular flavors were already sold out at that point, but the ones that I did try were pretty damn good. Starting with the Oatmeal cake doughnut, it was pretty dense and came studded with little bits of cranberries, apricot, and sunflower seeds. The glaze was on the sweet side, but I still enjoyed this doughnut quite a bit.

Banana Pecan Doughnut

My other selection was the Banana Pecan cake doughnut. It literally tasted like banana bread, only with a crisp outer layer from the frying that made it even better. Again, the glaze is pretty sweet but not tooth-numbingly so, a la Crumbs Cupcakes. The pecan chunks dotting the outside gave some nice crunch as well.

So while you don't usually want to have any doughnuts in baseball, the doughnuts from Doughnut Plant are certainly something that I can get behind. And thanks to a nifty coupon from Google Offers ($2.50 for $5 worth of doughnuts), I'll be making a return visit in the very near future. While their webpage design demonstrates why "less is more," they make some bangin' doughnuts.

Oh, and since I'm a baseball junkie, here are my postseason predictions:

ALDS
Yankees vs. Tigers: Yankees in 5
Rangers vs. Rays: Rangers in 4


ALCS
Yankees vs. Rangers: Yankees in 6

NLDS
Phillies vs. Cardinals: Phillies in 4
Diamondbacks vs. Brewers: Diamondbacks in 5

NLCS
Phillies vs. Diamondbacks: Phillies in 5

World Series
Phillies vs. Yankees: Phillies in 5

I'm usually pretty bad at the prediction game, so if I get 2 or 3 of these right, I'll be happy.

Doughnut Plant

379 Grand Street

New York, NY 10002