We Try the New Red Velvet Doughnut at Dunkin' Donuts

[Photographs: Erin Jackson]

If you've stopped into Dunkin' Donuts for a quick coffee recently, you may have noticed a doughnut with a strange, reddish hue: the red velvet drizzle doughnut. Dunkin' released the crimson-colored treat along with other seasonal goodies like peppermint mocha and gingerbread lattes.

What you're getting is a chocolate cake doughnut with a ton of red #40 and blue #1 mixed into the batter. There's nothing to set the doughnut apart from its non-dyed counterparts, except for the cream cheese drizzle, which is applied quite sparingly, and tastes like plain, confectioners' sugar-heavy frosting.

According to the nutritional information, the drizzle really does have cream cheese in it, but any tanginess it might have is overwhelmed by all of the sugar. Of the 15 ingredients in the drizzle, 3 of them are various types of sugar (dextrose, corn syrup solids, and plain ol' sugar—which is the first ingredient). Really, the only thing this doughnut accomplishes is looking somewhat like a red velvet cake, and tasting like a chocolate cake doughnut with a piddly drizzle of frosting.

Like the red velvet cookie from Panera, which one astute SE'er said looked like a kidney transplant, the doughnut lacks the main appeal of red velvet: that tangy, cream cheese frosting. Unless what you love most about red velvet is ingesting a bunch of red food coloring, I'd skip it.

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