hi, readers!  phillip davis back at it as a guest blogger on my lovely wife’s website.  it is with great pleasure that i yes, introduce you all to another unique doughnut spot that we visited yesterday for a breakfast treat called doughnut dollies!  i love the more traditional spelling of the word doughnut, so i will keep this consistent across the remainder of the blog.

it was a lovely sunday morning down here in atlanta, and kelsey and i were en-route to orangetheory fitness (otf for short) to get our workout groove on.  now, if you haven’t heard of or tried otf, it is a 60 minute high-intensity interval training cardio-based workout that seeks to get folks to experience epoc (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption).  essentially, the workout gets you out of breath and recovers you during the duration of the class so that your body burns more calories during and approximately 36 hours after the 1-hour workout.  kudos to our coaches, taylor, mike, obi, draya, and kat, for pushing us on a weekly basis.  i highly recommend trying a class if you haven’t already (hint hint, you can try your 1st class for FREE)!  ok, so i got carried away there, but had to mention otf since kelsey and i definitely have the “otf bug.”

anyway, we were on the way to otf when kelsey, out of the corner of her eye, saw a pretty unique logo to our right with what looked to be no other than an american red cross on it that had the words “doughnut dollies” above the iconic symbol.  now, i am sure that she saw the red cross instantly because she donates blood on a regular basis.  i, for one, initially thought the building was some kind of medical center, so i believed it wasn’t anything food-related until she told me, “oh, phillip!?  there’s a new doughnut place over there!”  without hesitation, i got the car to a complete stop at the red traffic light, turned to look at the logo, then told kelsey, “oh, we’re definitely going there after our workout!”

cool logo stamped on carry-out box!

once our 1-hour otf strength workout came to a close (thanks for a good class, obi), we got in the car and drove roughly 1 minute away off howell mill road to go see what the cute, little doughnut shop was all about.  we entered the cafe, which by the way, was clean and tidy, and noticed the incredibly large doughnuts staring right in front of our faces inside the clear glass counter.  now, the howell mill location is doughnut dollies’ 2nd location in georgia, and silly enough, this particular store was celebrating its 1 month anniversary since they opened last month in june.  what a fun way to celebrate a very special occasion by trying and enjoying some doughnuts ourselves!  time was on our side, for sure.

kelsey and i looked at the different types of doughnuts (the store calls them tiers, or levels, since they have a variety of basic and specialty doughnuts that customers can order) and decided to order a strawberry doughnut and a smores doughnut.  at first glance, we felt the tiers were a little confusing since they had 4 different price levels depending on what kind of doughnut you order, and the doughnuts were not clearly sorted by tier in the glass window display.  we got over this pretty quickly and selected our doughnut choices shortly thereafter.  we also noticed that the store served jittery joe’s coffee, so naturally, we decided to order 1 small coffee with cream and sugar to split (i didn’t want to get over-caffeinated).

jitt joe’s – yum!

i am happy that we each selected 1 doughnut and not 2; these are some of the biggest doughnuts i have ever seen!  also, the price seemed a little high, however if you order 1 doughnut and coffee, you’re only looking to spend no more than $5, so not a deal-breaker.  the presentation of the doughnuts was definitely very good, in my opinion.  kelsey’s strawberry doughnut had lite brown sugar sprinkled on top and 2 dried strawberry slices to complement the pink frosting.  my smores doughnut literally was a sandwich, yes, a sandwich!  the doughnut was cut in half with loads of melted marshmallow in between each half, and chocolate frosting and graham cracker bits were garnished on top.

as with any food review, we, of course, had to describe how these giant doughnuts tasted on our palettes.  i told kelsey that my smores doughnut had a good balance of marshmallow filling to doughnut and chocolate frosting.  i did mention that it was “pretty d*&m good” and was surprised to conclude that the doughnut was actually very light to taste.  kelsey agreed and mentioned that she enjoyed how fluffy it was and was happy that it didn’t taste too rich, but wholesome.

smores.

kelsey’s words regarding her strawberry doughnut were spoken without hesitation, “d*&m, that’s good, too.  yum!”  i thought her strawberry tasted a little sweeter than the smores, but it wasn’t really dense or heavy like i expected it to be.  and the jittery joe’s coffee, you ask?  it’s always a good brew of coffee, nothing more to say there!

strawberry.

in conclusion, we’d definitely go back and take our parents and friends to visit the shop.  it has a good, casual vibe with pretty good staff and great tasting doughnuts and coffee.  stop by the new howell mill road location or the original location up in marietta.  you won’t be disappointed.

so happy!