Just in time for Valentine's' Day: Dunkin's Cookie Dough Donut

If, at a more innocent time in the not-so-distant  past, you had proposed that a doughnut -- wrapped around an uncooked cookie and formed into the shape of a heart – would be considered an idea vehicle for the expression of affection, you might well have attracted some quizzical looks.

And yet, this Valentine’s Day, Dunkin has released two special donuts to commemorate the holday: Brownie Batter (uncooked pastries appear to be a theme, suggesting I’m not sure what) and Cookie Dough, reviewed here.

Dark chocolate makes for a promising beginning!

The donut base is the standard-issue Dunkin donut: a neutral vessel with very little sweetness and appealing note of yeasty sourness.  The first bites are promising, for in addition to the cookie dough filling, the donut is generously coated with dark chocolate icing and dark chocolate chips that impart a sophisticated and sensual richness.   Your chocolate-loving valentine would be will pleased by this.

The trouble begins as one nears the center and begins to experience the “cookie dough” filling.  The filling isn’t really dough, but more of an unctuous dough-flavored syrupy goop.  It could be no other way, for any filling has to be piped into the donuts interior, after baking, necessitating a thinness and fluidity that could not be achieved by actual dough.

Ick. Cookie dough ooze.

Dunkin has attempted to nonetheless approximate the texture of cookie dough by including granules of undissolved sugar into the goo.  I wondered, as I tasted this, how they kept the sugar granules in suspension such that they wouldn’t dissolve in the liquid mixture.   My best guess is that the filling is so super-saturated with sugar that no additional particle can dissolve into solution, and indeed  the sweetness is so overwhelming that this possibility seems plausible.  What the result cannot be, to me, is anything approaching palatable.  The tan ooze permeates every corner of the mouth as it converges on the center of the donut, flooding the zone with strong notes of artificial butter and brown sugar.

One wants to give Dunkin some points here for ambition and creativity but to me it’s all too much.  The heart-shaped cookie dough donut is a misconceived embarrassment.  At press time, the "brownie batter" donut was not available at my local Dunkin location, but a review shall be forthcoming at such time as it may be purchased, certainly in time for aspiring romantics to make informed Valentine's Day decisions.

- Full disclosure: Another taster present at Food Kingdom studios at the time of testing found that this concoction really hit the spot, though she allowed that the major influencer might have been her substantial breakfast time hunger.