Saccharine Sanctuary

Doughnuts have always been a safe haven for me. If I learned one thing from my Memere, it’s this: In times of trouble, there is little that they cannot solve. I also have a long family history of visiting Wells, Maine – the home of Congdon’s Doughnuts. If ever my family wakes up in Maine and there aren’t enough buttercrunch doughnuts to go round, there is hell to pay for whoever picked them up. Testament to my loyalty – even here in Boston, I subscribe to the restaurant’s (very entertaining) newsletter.

Despite being late to the game (more trend-observer than trend-setter), you can only imagine my excitement at learning of UnionSquare Donuts’ march towards Massachusetts morning pastry domination.

Good Lord, they are delicious.

Getting them, however, proved to be an adventure in itself.

Originally, I wanted to make my first purchase at the SoWa Market – I think I wrote about this a little while ago – but they were sold out. Next time.

That next time was July 2, the day my fiancée and I moved, and we kind of thought it might be fun to greet our minions/volunteers/family with a delicious selection of doughnuts. You know, just some casual maple bacons, salted caramel bourbons, and hazelnut crunches – nothing too fancy. But that got scrapped, largely because I did a terrible job of putting things in boxes throughout the preceding days. Ugh.

This past Saturday, otherwise known as Beach Day, was also intended to begin with doughnuts. And, in fact, it nearly did. After sorting out all of the necessaries for getting to Revere (buying beach chairs, getting sunscreen, and of course watching Pioneer Woman on Food Network first), Miss Beantown and I found ourselves lost in Somerville attempting to locate Union Square Doughnuts, getting nowhere in traffic, and hunting down possible parking spaces, all the while expounding upon the amount of time being spent on a tense search for pastries when the beach awaited in all of its laid-back glory.

But then!  Then the skies parted. Shop in sight, meter pumped, mouths salivating, we arrived at the tail end of a very long line. Having made plans to meet a friend at the beach, we were forced to abandon ship. And we were so close. So very, very close.

At this point, by the way, I was quite the unpleasant pheasant, thinking “These better be the best doughnuts I have ever tasted.”

The very next day we returned to the place where this quixotic saga began, the SoWa Market. Knowing to get there early, we strolled right up to the Union Square Donuts stand and calmly – very calmly, like Val Kilmer calm – ordered some as if we had done it a million times before.

Worth. The. Wait.

These doughnuts aren’t just good. They aren’t even just really good. They are incredible. And we didn’t even find the maple bacons, salted caramel bourbons, or hazelnut crunches. Instead we stumbled upon vanilla bean, strawberry, and orange creamsicle. They were huge, fluffy, doughy, tasty, ornamented treats that were more than worth the wait.

Whatever you have to do, these are not to be missed.

Til next time!