Donuts aren’t just filled with jelly and custard, they’re stuffed with temptation.
Presented with a box, it’s hard to eat just one. So spending five hours making them can be hazardous to your waistline.
That’s why Jon Goodridge rides his bike.
And as the proprietor of Royal City Donuts ramps up production for a summer full of farmer’s markets — including regular appearances at the Coquitlam Farmers Market, which opens its season Sunday — Goodridge is preparing to ride a lot.
This could be a breakout year for the New Westminster donut maker, who first started creating the doughy delights because his city didn't have a decent donut shop. Unwilling to compromise his craving and hit a certain chain of coffee shops to satisfy his taste for sweet stickiness, he bought a stove-top deep frier and started Googling recipes.
A self-confessed bread “fanatic,” Goodridge settled on instructions for a yeast-based brioche dough that uses less sugar and provides a little more chewy sustenance rather than the more common cake donut. As he experimented with fillings and toppings — including maple bacon, Mexican chocolate and lemon custard with a blueberry glaze — he snapped photos with his cellphone and posted them to Instagram.
Then, people started enquiring how they could get them.
So Goodridge, who makes his living as a hair stylist, set up a couple of pop-up shops at local events and got busy in his kitchen. His donuts sold out in minutes.
Last winter, he contracted space in a commissary kitchen in Burnaby and started selling his donuts regularly at the New Westminster winter market, where visitors had to squeeze their way through the line that snaked from his booth across the street. If you didn’t get in that line early, you were unlikely to snag one or more of the 270 donuts he’d fry up for market day.
Goodridge said farmers markets such as Coquitlam's long-running affair are a perfect testing ground to determine if there’s a demand for his creations as shoppers who frequent them are already predisposed to seeking out unique, local products. That could eventually lead to a permanent brick-and-mortar shop, or even a food truck. In addition to his two or three visits a month to the Coquitlam market on Sundays, he’ll also be at Burnaby’s market on Saturdays and New Westminster’s Thursday market, as well as special events.
Goodridge has also found craft breweries fertile ground for donut delights and said he’s hoping to expand a budding relationship with Moody Ales in Port Moody where he paid a couple of visits last winter to great acclaim.
Of course, the rising desire for his yeasty confections means Goodridge has to spend more time in the kitchen, which leaves less time for cycling.
Still, he has toyed with the idea of creating donuts with holes big enough to slide onto the ends of his handlebars for those quick mid-ride energy boosts.
• The Coquitlam Farmers Market begins May 6 and runs every Sunday through the end of October, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is located in the parking lot of the Dogwood Pavilion at 1655 Winslow Ave. (at Poirier, next to Centennial secondary school). Goodridge will make his first appearance at the market in its third week.
