Can we please place a moratorium on bastardizing doughnuts? I will accept the experimentation that allowed Voo Doo Doughnut in Portland, OR lead a revolution in the early 200os with their bacon maple bar. Sure, bring on the chocolate salted almond and the pistachio Meyer lemon options. But, things are getting out of hand. Cafe Calacas’ Chorizo Queso Fundido Doughnut? Really? Surfin’ Donuts burrito with your choice of doughnut, your choice of meat, eggs, and salsa? No. Stop it. But, will people stop? No. They never do!
A recent YouTube video features the creation of the Giant Mac n’ Cheetos Doughnut, which isn’t even a doughnut but is instead the gargantuan cousin of a fried mac n’ cheese ball. Can we approve of the food? Absolutely not. Can we enjoy the video of it being made? Totally.
I can’t fault the actual mac and cheese that they prepare because it is cheese (duh), mascarpone, butter, and heavy cream. Other than vegans and the lactose intolerant, there shouldn’t be anyone who takes issue with those things being cooked into a gooey cheese sauce. After this, it’s all down hill, though. Elbow noodles meet cheese sauce and the whole thing is packed in a giant doughnut mold, sealed in cling film, and shoved in the freezer overnight. Next, the frozen monstrosity is battered in flour and egg before it’s enthusiastically coated in Cheeto dregs and dropped into hot oil (a process that makes you increasingly certain that someone is going to pull back a blistered, melted hand). Finally, it is covered once again in Cheeto grounds and baked in the oven.
The actual appeal of the video are the people — a combo of the YouTube channels ThreadBanger and Hellthy Junk Food. These Millennial foodies genuinely seem to be having fun while they create a terrible thing that should never exist. These guys have become become death, the destroyer of doughnuts.
The “doughnut” weighs in at a mammoth 8950 calories. But, let’s be honest: unless you’re so high that your eyelids feel too heavy to lift and the world has become a funny haze, you aren’t downing this giant affront to the name doughnut. However, the slo-mo of them eating the…look, I’m not calling it a doughnut again…is total food porn, and it makes it look pretty great. Not as great as an actual doughnut, but we all have issues.
