WICKED DONUTS I’m a Michigan girl at heart. Since I’ve been living in Las Vegas and looking for mitten flavors, I’ve found a few authentic Michigander experiences like the square pie at Northside Nathan’s and the coney cheese fries at American Coney Island. When a particular Food Network award-winning chef continued to reach out to me via social media to try his donuts at Wicked Donuts, it didn’t really pique my interest until, on Instagram, they bragged about offering Paczki on Fat Tuesday here in Vegas.
If you aren’t hip to this Polish tradition that, year after year, a loyal Michigan citizen would go to Hamtramck and bring a box of them to work and or home. Let me fill you in. Paczki are pronounced “poonchkees” and are made from a sweet yeasty dough of butter, eggs, and milk. Regular donuts are not as rich and or fattening as Paczki, and they don’t have a hole in the middle like traditional donuts. They are usually filled with jam; the name translates to a Polish donut. So, when I saw Wicked Doughnuts offer them for Vegas on our latest Fat Tuesday, I immediately hopped in the car with my husband to get a treat from my childhood.
When we got home with a box of a dozen of my favorite Polish pastries, we shared them with our three boys. They were dusted with powdered sugar, unlike the glazed ones from my memory. These were not Hamtramck proper versions of the jelly donut I remembered. The dough was dry, the size was significant, and the boys could only eat one of them (These are boys that eat 3-4 doughnuts each time from Krispy Kreme, Dee’s Donuts, or Dunkin Donuts). It also cost us a staggering $44 for the dozen that we purchased. The remainder of our order ended up in the trash. That’s 7 of 12 doughnuts in the garbage. If you knew my kids, you’d know that generally, a donut purchased from any other store never ends up in the garbage.
I know it’s a mom-and-pop joint, so I didn’t want to write negatively until I got the opportunity to revisit their shop, so we went back on another occasion to try a few different flavor offerings. We returned and tried a Bavarian custard, strawberry, and cream, glazed, a pink lady-raised sugar-rolled donut with hibiscus icing and crystals. Out of the collections of flavors that we sampled, the strawberry one was by far my favorite, followed in second place by the Bavarian custard donut.
The bottom line is that I wouldn’t trash the bakery, but I wasn’t blown away either. I strongly support small businesses, so I’d recommend if you give them a try go early and ask about which item is fresh. The highlight of getting a dozen from the hipster spot is the design of their box which captures the rockabilly nature of the chef.