Cheapskate Gourmet: Donut Danger

Walnut Creek’s Morucci’s is selling a breakfast food you might not be able to kick

For all you recovering donut addicts, do not read on. The information in this blog is just too hot for you to handle. I do not want to be responsible for your poor work performance, your moodiness, your lack of interest in sex. Please go away. Just excuse yourself and realize it’s for your own good. The first step to true recovery is just saying no.

Now, for those of us who have a healthy relationship with donuts, you can continue reading. I’m fine with them because I wake up each morning feeling morally superior to the kind of person who would fill up on sugary breakfast treats. (By 2 p.m., I’m elbow-deep in my secret stash of dark chocolate, but that’s a different story.)

Monday morning, I was picking up a coffee at Morucci’s on Boulevard Way in Walnut Creek when I saw a little sign that said, “Carmela’s Donuts from Santa Lucia, Italy” on a small basket of what appeared to be granulated sugar–dusted homemade donuts. Homemade. Not those generic sinkers that are available at every supermarket bakery.

I was a little worried about how the heck these golden beauties got here from Italy, but it turned out the donut maker herself, Christine Schoenweiler, was at Morucci’s, and she explained it was the recipe that came from Italy. Schoenweiler’s great-grandmother, Carmela, developed it.

Schoenweiler went on to say that the donuts are made with Russet potatoes, and that worried me about as much as thinking they’d traveled here from Europe. But she said she leavened them with yeast and cooked them in just a bit of oil, which she says hardly absorbs into the donuts.

After my third one that morning, plus another two just before lunch, I realized this was what I’d been searching for all my life. I’d had infatuations before, but this was love. These donuts are surprisingly light and slightly elastic, like a good Italian bread. You can taste the potato, and it adds a definite heartiness. After one donut—I was only kidding about eating five in a single morning—I was set until lunch.

Schoenweiler tells me she used to make these donuts, which sell at Morucci’s for $1.25 each, solely at Christmas. But about two months ago, she was visiting her mother, and her mother’s 75-year-old friend, who was being treated for cancer. She decided to “dedicate the day to them,” Schoeweiler says, and she made the two women a batch of donuts.

Her mother’s friend thought they were amazing and a great recession-era food. “In this economy,” she said, “you could live on these.”

As they say, the rest is history. Since Schoenweiler started selling the donuts at Morucci’s (which, incidentally, is owned by her sister and brother-in-law, Rosemarie and Rob Fambrini), Costco has tried to get her to sell them the recipe, and a local supermarket wants to carry them, saying they’re better than the Semifreddi’s Morning Buns they already sell.

Now, she’s making additional new varieties—powdered sugar and cinnamon dusting or covered with homemade chocolate frosting. “Oh, and don’t forget Maple Mondays,” the effervescent Schoenweiler says, referring to a homemade maple frosting she puts on her Monday batch.

Just remember, they’re addictive.

Posted at 03:29 PM in Cheapskate Gourmet | Permalink