SuzyQ

LOOK what I had for lunch today. A raspberry cranberry white chocolate doughnut,  less sweet than it looks, made from scratch in small batches by the new SuzyQ. It was actually one-third, more or less, of a raspberry cranberry white chocolate doughnut. Plus a smallish bite of five other doughnuts (because they’re cheaper by the half dozen) and one complete, crumbs and all, Caramel Fleur de Sel doughnut. This, to celebrate what would have been my mother’s 75th birthday, she who always held fast to the idea that a rotten miserable no good wretchedly risible day could be cheered with a doughnut. She was a particular fan of the apple fritter. But she’d settle for a French cruller in a pinch.

Open Thursday to Sunday the SuzyQ web site says. But here it was, Wednesday, and by some miracle, she was open, this little white bunker of a place in a parking lot on  Wellington West, the space the Hintonburger used to call home before the Hintonburger moved to a former finguh-lickin’ good location across the street and down the ways.

So in I went, and out I came, armed with a box of six. For the boys, you understand. For when they got home from school, and in the condition my boys are entirely accustomed to receiving gifts of food from Mum: pre-sampled.

Suzy Q is also known as Sue Hamer. She’s a postie apparently, a mum of three, who grew up on her Finnish mother’s munkki and had been lovingly munkki-making for years for addicted letter carrier colleagues, before deciding to take her gifts, first to the Farmers’ Market at Lansdowne, and now to this home in Hintonburg. The munkki , a sugar dusted doughnut that seemed to me armed with a hint of nutmeg, was slightly more brioche-like than the others I tried. The vanilla glazed had a clear vanilla bean perfume and was remarkably fresh. The salted caramel was most like a cinnamon bun, though its topping was a scrumptious adult flavour. You understand why I needed to shield the boys. The pink one with the white squiggles was the prettiest, iced with raspberry and drizzled with white chocolate, while the one with the lemongrass-infused glaze and crowned with toasted coconut was lovely. The bacon maple was the wackiest. I either really liked it, or really didn’t. My sons were equally confused. But I wouldn’t order it again. My mother wouldn’t have approved.

“…Well say that you’ll be true, and never leave me blue, oh Suzy Q…”

991 Wellington Street West. Open, apparently, Thursday to Sunday from 9am, but methinks also open on Wednesdays for the right cause. Doughnuts cost $2 each, or $1.66 if you order them 6 for 10 bucks. I managed the math.