Before last month, I only knew Frodo as an adventuring hobbit from Middle Earth, but that all changed when I tasted FroDoh, a frozen doughnut hole adventure.
FroDoh is a University of Maryland start-up company founded by senior economics major, Simon Amato. To dive a little bit deeper into the magic behind a FroDoh doughnut hole, I had a conversation with him about his inspiration to create this iconic UMD dessert.
The story behind Amato’s discovery is actually quite comical.
About a year and a half ago he was housesitting for a friend and like all of us, got hungry and proceeded to rummage through the fridge. He then proceeded to peek in the freezer where he found some generic doughnuts that the homeowner froze to preserve while they were away. Naturally, the food loving Amato decided to give it a try. He admitted that they were not very good, but upon first bite he could taste the potential.
So from there a business was born. Amato formed a squad with Holly Wilson, Alexandra Cimino, and Diego Lyon and the FroDoh concept became a reality.
After much trial and error, the FroDoh recipe was created. These doughnuts needed to be eaten straight out of the freezer, so the recipe had to account for the fact that people shouldn’t chip a tooth upon first bite.
So here is the basic idea of how it goes: Every doughnut inside is made from flavored batter. That batter is piped into molds and then baked. After baking, the doughnuts go through a quick flash fry and then they are frozen. Once frozen, the coating and crumble is added to complete it.
Something special about the FroDoh doughnut is the integrity that's in every bite. The Blueberry flavor is made with a real blueberry puree and every flavor has only real ingredients. Out of three layers of flavor, nothing is a shortcut.
But talk can only go so far. In my chapter, we hosted a tasting of the three main flavors; banana nut, blueberry and s’mores. Here are our thoughts outside of the video above.
Banana Nut
Side Note: I can’t stand anything banana. It’s the one food that just does not agree with my taste and texture buds. But, I put my bias aside and gave these a fair taste. I tasted them and was pleasantly surprised, it was delicious.
In the first bite, you mostly get peanut butter and fudge in the coating. The banana flavor comes in when you get deep into the cake part. I think the reason why I liked it so much was the peanut butter overpowered the banana.
The banana cake tasted noticeably real though. The fresh banana puree showed in flavor and made this doughnut a very enjoyable combination.
Blueberry
We all agreed that this tasted like a very dense blueberry crumble muffin, only in little form. Magically though, the doughnut was still light and didn’t give anyone that sickening heavy feeling.
Another thing to mention on this doughnut was the vanilla crumble on the outside. In my opinion, this was the best part. It reminded me of icing on a cinnamon roll. It takes something yummy on it’s own and makes it cravable.
Also, this doughnut was very aesthetically pleasing. You bite into a purply-blue beautiful cake. The best part is, the entire coloring came from the blueberries. Nothing was added to enhance it.
S’mores
This was my personal favorite, but I’m also a marshmallow junkie. I picked it up and immediately felt the stickiness of the marshmallow exterior. I was excited already.
In tasting it, it was obviously amazing, but did not really taste like a s’more. My best description would be that it was chocolate munchkin with a fudgy exterior.
Some of my fellow tasters thought this one was a bit rich, but I personally loved the indulgent chocolaty goodness.
So Which is the Best?
Among four tasters, blueberry won with two votes and both s’mores and banana nut got one vote each. Because we had such close results, I wanted another opinion. What better way than to ask Amato himself?
After careful thought, he put in a vote for blueberry, but also mentioned that banana nut was a close second. But due to the closeness of the results, you’re just going to have to try each flavor for yourself.
Luckily for all of our sweet teeth, FroDoh has some epic goals for the future.
The start-up is becoming more inclusive with a vegan doughnut. Amato also talked about new flavors, especially around the Easter season (You can expect to see some pretty spring colored FroDoh doughnuts soon!)
Another potential expansion would be beyond doughnuts. Amato has intentions to start freezing all of our favorite desserts as he starts to mentally develop FroBros (frozen brownies). And the best part is, they now deliver within a five-mile radius. There is no need to move to get your doughnut fix taken care of.
No matter what happens, we can be sure that FroDoh will never let us settle for mediocre normal desserts.