Mrs. Freshley's Mini Donuts: Crunch

Product name: Mrs. Freshley’s Mini Donuts: Crunch
Purchase details: £2.50 for a 96g packet of six doughnuts (A Quarter of Sweets)
Calories: 380 per pack
Country of origin: USA

I love doughnuts, me, but so far in life, I’ve only ever come across the fresh variety. As a result, I was intrigued when I recently found two varieties of Mrs. Freshley’s Mini Donuts in A Quarter of Sweets. I wasn’t convinced that a longer life version would be very nice but there was only one way to find out!

The Donuts were distributed by Flowers Foods Speciality Group and featured the standard white and blue Mrs. Freshley’s branding. This Crunch variety was represented by the colour teal and, as usual, the inner product was visible through the packaging. This was partly what drew me to the product since the squishy doughnuts looked bigger than most British miniatures and, amazingly, the whole pack was one serving – wahey!

Despite being ring doughnuts, the golden treats were definitely more dough than hole. There was no product description so I was unsure what contributed to the ‘Crunch’ but the Donuts were coated in what looked like soggy crumbs. However, they were dry to the touch and despite the idea of a crunchy doughnut seeming a little strange, on close inspection, I wondered if the experience would actually be provided by sugar granules.

Inside, the dough was paler in colour and looked a bit like Madeira cake, and the scent produced by the apparently new and improved recipe was one similar to sugar-coated almonds.

I found these Mini Donuts did manage to capture the basic flavour of a doughnut and their sugary coating (I was right!) helped contribute to this. However, there was definitely a difference when compared to freshly baked ones – the outside felt quite moist in the mouth but the overall texture was pretty dry but dense. Thankfully, this wasn’t to the extent that I needed a drink to help me along, but they did feel more cake-like than doughnut-like. The Donuts also had a very slight metallic taste but, the more I ate, the sweeter the general flavour seemed to become.

As for being called ‘Crunch’, this was certainly a feature, but it was an element that was just like ordinary sugar-coated doughnuts rather than being created by some random add-on ingredient.

As long-life doughnuts, these Mrs. Freshley’s Mini Donuts: Crunch had the potential to be awful...but they weren’t! I can’t pretend they were as good as freshly baked ones but they were a perfectly acceptable alternative to keep in the cupboard for when the munchies strike. The fact that I’ve since been back and bought a third variety that had previously been out of stock is testament to their edibility!

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 6.5/10
Overall score: 7/10