Krispy Kreme Coffee and Doughnut Pairings

Last week we were invited to attend the 2012 Very Important Blogger (VIB) Summit held at Krispy Kreme located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  Krispy Kreme is celebrating their 75^th birthday this year, so watch out for some special things from them this year.  One of the many sessions scheduled for us was the “Worthy of Our Doughnuts: A Coffee and Doughnut Pairing Experience.

This session consisted of two pairs:

Coffee education given by Branan Wagaman, Krispy Kreme’s Beverage Operations Manager.  He is responsible for the development, planning, launch, and ongoing management of all Kripsy Kreme beverage programs.  He focused primarily on Krispy Kreme’s new specially crafted Signature Blend coffees.  He described the blends as we sample them.

Dougnut Pairings given by Ron Rupocinski, Kripsy Kreme’s Corporate Chef.  As Corporate Chef, he uses his vast culinary and baking expertise / education to help develop and produce international and domestic food and beverage products.

After Branan educated us about the coffee and Ron educated us about product development, we moved into the coffee and doughnut pairings.  Here Ron explained his process in choosing which doughnuts to pair with each of the three different Signature Blend coffees.

The new Signature coffees are:

• “Krispy Kreme Signature House Blend – A smooth, medium-bodied, Latin American blend with a balanced flavor profile for the everyday coffee drinker.”
• “Krispy Kreme Signature Dark Roast– With a dark roasted, full-bodied flavor, this blend of African, Indonesian and Central American coffees was made for those who prefer a bolder coffee taste.”
• “Krispy Kreme Signature House Decaf– A decaffeinated blend of Columbian and Sumatran coffee with all the taste and none of the jitters.”

They also suggest pairings of their new coffee with different doughnuts from their wide varieties of doughnuts for different times of the day.  The table below was copied from a pamphlet given to me by Krispy Kreme.

	House Blend	Dark Roast	House Decaf
Early Morning	Hot Original Glazed®	Pumpkin Spice	Hot Original Glazed®
Morning Break	Coffee Break Doughnut	Cinnamon Bun	Chocolate Iced Glazed
Lunch	Glazed Sour Cream	Apple Pie	Glazed Cruller
Afternoon Break	Powdered Jrs.	Chocolate Iced Kreme Filled™	Doughnut Holes
Early Evening	Glazed Lemon Filled	Hot Original Glazed®	Hot Original Glazed®
Late Night	Glazed Chocolate Cake	Glazed Raspberry Filled	New York Cheesecake
Special Occasion	Maple Iced Cake Doughnut	Dulce de Leche	Chocolate Iced with Sprinkles

The Apple Pie and Powdered Jrs. Doughnuts are only available at grocery and convenience stores.

Addressing their new Signature Blend coffee before we talk about the pairings, I fully agree with Krispy Kreme’s description about these new coffee blends.  To me, their description is right on mark with how the coffee taste.  The taste that came to my mind as I continued sipping the House blend was that of a Brazilian nut; nutty, with a somewhat creamy flavor.  The Dark Roast blend was a bold, full-bodied coffee without much bitterness sometimes characteristic of other dark roast coffees.  The Dark Roast is the one I prefer because it has what I look for in a coffee.  The House Decaf taste much like the regular House blend.

Now, onto the pairings.  Before I go further, one thing Chef Rupocinski suggested during the pairing was not to use sugar in the coffee because if you have sugar in your coffee and a doughnut that has a glaze or a filling, more sugar, all the characteristics of both the coffee and doughnut may be masked by the sugar, thus ruining a successful pairing.  He suggested maybe a little dairy in your coffee.

The pairing we tried were:

House Blend and Glazed Blueberry

Dark Roast and Glazed Raspberry Filled

House Decaf and Chocolate Iced Kreme Filled

Each of these pairings worked extremely well, neither the doughnuts nor the coffees were overpowered by each other.  In fact, each had characteristics that accented the other, like two main characters of a play, both working in unison to make the play itself the focus, not the individual characters.

I think just about any of their doughnuts would pair well with any of their new Signature Blend coffees.

Disclosure: We learned about coffee and doughnut pairings on our trip to the Krispy Kreme headquarters in North Carolina. Airfare and hotel were covered for us by Krispy Kreme for this trip but what we write is our own opinion and based on our experience.