First things first: dunking doughnuts is done. It’s over. Yeast doughnuts can’t even, and cake doughnuts are so meh. We’ll bend for a pershing, a glazed old-fashioned, or ideally a maple bar, like the ones found at Original House of Donuts in Lakewood, Washington. But for most doughnuts, the sponginess of the dough turns a desired dish into a mush mess in the mouth. No thank you. This is 2016, we’re living in the new wave of coffee, and dunking doughnuts is all washed up.
What for then, for which to dunk? Well, we’ve ranked familiar favorites and threw in some wild ideas to give you the definitive, inarguable list of Stuff To Dunk In Coffee, Ranked.
Best: Biscotti
Without question, the biscotti is the single best item to dunk in coffee. A biscotti is designed and baked for dunking in mind. Its density and crunch make it almost unbearable to eat on its own, but when you combine the nutted biscotti with a hint of orange peel and gently introduce the taste delight into your hot mug of coffee, both products become one, and then it goes in your belly. Sans-dunk, inedible; après-dunk, ineffable.
See also: other forms of biscotti.
Better: Almond Horn
The almond horn is taste sensation on its own, and like the biscotti, its density and richness make a dunked horn a warmed delight with a slightly softened chew. An almond croissant’s light texture would soak coffee up like a sponge, and leave you a soppy mess. The nimble horn, on the other hand, will leave you feeling clean and fresh.
See also: the mighty schnecken (particularly those found at Danish Maid in Astoria, Oregon), the overrated kouign-amann, and the dreaded cronut.
Okay: Cookie
Kind of a classic, but really more of a milk thing. A cookie is fine, but dunk lightly, lest the whole thing end up at the bottom of your mug. What a sad fate.
Worst: Banana
The starchiness of the dessert fruit does not lend well to dunking, and the acid interaction of berry fruit with drupe juice is wrong, all wrong. Do not recommend. Would give zero stars if we could.
Terrible: Shrimp
No stranger to shellfish and coffee pairings, we decided to explore the dunkability of the bug of the sea, the seasoned shrimp. On its own, perhaps dipped in a creole aioli, this crustacean would be a ten. Dunked in coffee? Not so much.
Not As Bad: Battered Shrimp
The sweetness of the beer batter and the double crunch of the fry and flesh turned this dunking experiment into a transcendent one. We see a big future of fried seafood coffee pairings in 2016. Don’t say “ew” until you’ve tried it yourself.
Honorable mention: Beignets from Cafe du Monde
Beignets from Cafe du Monde should be the true number one on this list, but it’s not a universal entry. Enjoying the GOAT dunkable requires several conditions that must first be met: you must be in New Orleans to enjoy this treat; it must be like 3am; you must not have an aversion to getting powdered sugar all over yourself; and you must be with a bemused, slightly annoyed local who rolls their eyes at the Du Monde suggestion, but then ends up having the most fun out of everyone.
Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge.
