Yuzu Karinto - A Refined Japanese Donut

I recently found these karinto (or karintō/karinto) from the bakery Provence, a French-themed Japanese bakery in Singapore. The karinto is pretty much the Japanese version of the donut - basically a fried dough stick, and traditionally coated with brown sugar glazing. But these seemed to just use normal sugar for the glazing.

I bought their two flavours - original and yuzu.

The original one was like a normal glazed old-fashioned donut, so there was nothing special about it. Maybe a slight noteworthy point was that the glazing was relatively thick (although not too sweet in my opinion), so there was a delicate crisp when biting into the stick. But I've noticed this in other donuts too.

However, I was especially impressed with the yuzu karinto, which was like a yuzu donut flavoured in a very refined way. I find that most commercial donuts (e.g. sold by Krispy Kreme, J Co., Dunkin' Donuts and the like) are overdone if you order anything other than their original, or maybe some old-fashioned ranges. The beauty of the donut is really the fried dough flavour, which is completely drowned out when doused with jarringly sweet creams and sauces.

But here, you can see no such loud creams and colours... almost no visible difference from the original except for the yellow flecks of what I think is yuzu peel embedded in the glazing.

Despite its appearance though, the fragrance of the bitter-sweet yuzu flavour filled my palate and seemed to permeate right through the dough. Almost like the whole karinto donut was infused with strongly-flavoured yuzu tea or something. Very different from the overly-sweet dollops of jams and marmalades that would fill other bakeries' flavoured donuts.

Other than the pieces of yuzu peel on the outside, I have no idea how they managed to get the flavour so strong... I didn't see anything yuzu-related on the inside after I bit into it. Maybe it's all in the glazing.

This is easily one of the best donuts I've tried out of the non-original flavours. So typical of the Japanese culture - creativity and excellence expressed through the simplicity and refinement of zen. Maybe the other comparable experience was having soy donuts with kinako (toasted soy bean powder) and kuromitsu (brown sugar sauce) in Kyoto's Nishiki market.

What's more, it's really cheap - S$2.10 for the original and S$2.40 for the yuzu flavoured packets, with each packet containing 6 of these sticks. So yes, yuzu karinto donuts from Provence - highly recommended!