Clark’s Island Donuts gives visitors a delicious taste of the islands
A box of malasadas from Clark's Island Donuts, including original with cinnamon sugar, bavarian cream, coconut, dobash and guava, and original with sugar, clockwise from top left, on Tuesday at a food truck event in Eagle Mountain. SPENSER HEAPS, Daily Herald
A Haole, which features a malasada topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit from Clark's Island Donuts.
A malasada with guava filling.
Clark's Island Donuts serves customers on Tuesday in Eagle Mountain.
A box of malasadas from Clark's Island Donuts.
A Haole, which features a malasada topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit, from Clark's Island Donuts.
A malasada with guava filling from Clark's Island Donuts. Visit heraldextra.com/ticket to read a review.
While living in Tokyo for several months in 2006, I became completely infatuated, nay obsessed, with a cleverly named little pastry shop called Beard Papa’s.
This shop, with its pipe-smoking, Santa-looking namesake was known for its freshly baked, still warm, filled-in-front-of-you cream puffs. These cream puffs were pure delicious heaven with a warm yet crispy pastry shell filled with a thick vanilla bean cream. I quickly became a frequent customer of the location just outside my neighborhood train station. Weary and exhausted from hours of sight-seeing and souvenir shopping each day, a quick stop into that shop for a cream puff or two made my walk back home even more delightful. (It was a good thing I walked everywhere in Tokyo for those few months. I had to walk off all those cream puff calories!)
While there isn’t a Beard Papa’s location here in Utah, (Imagine my delight when I returned to the states to learn the cream puff shops are scattered throughout the West and East coasts, and now in Las Vegas! And believe me, trips to Manhattan and Orange County have included quests for Beard Papa!), I believe I have found a pretty close pastry substitute.
While donuts and cream puffs may be distant pastry cousins, the decadent treats at the Clark’s Island Donuts food truck and my beloved Beard Papa’s have several, very tasty things in common.
First, both pastry delights are freshly prepared, served nice and warm.
Clark’s Island Donuts, which are actually known as Malasadas — a Portuguese donut creation made popular in the islands of Hawaii — are served fresh and piping hot. Sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, or just sugar, they are served nice and warm, creating a true melt-in-your-mouth experience.
Second, both Beard Papa’s and Clark’s Island Donuts fill their pastries with the freshest and tastiest of fillings.
Clark’s Island Donuts are not like traditional hole-y donuts. These round, hole-less donuts are actually filled with different flavors of creams and custards. There’s vanilla custard, coconut cream, dobash chocolate and a guava jelly.
All of these fillings are delicious and melt perfectly with hot donut shell. I think I was most delighted with the explosion of fruit flavor found in that guava-filled donut. A nice blend of the sweet cinnamon and sugar-covered donut with the slightly tart island fruit proved to be my favorite out of the variety my family and I sampled.
Third, both styles of pastry are best eaten when warm and fresh.
While I always tried to save and ration those Beard Papa’s cream puffs by putting them in the fridge to enjoy later, the delicious, nirvana-like effect was never quite the same. Fresh cream puffs were always better.
This same “fresh is best” rule holds true for Clark’s Island Donuts, too. While a breakfast of leftover malasadas is delicious, these desserts are best enjoyed fresh when the shell is warm and the cream filling is still cold, when the warmth from that shell gently melts the filling, making every bite filled with flavor.
Fourth, you just may have to travel some distance to enjoy each of these pastries, but the trip is worth it.
When I decided to treat my family and myself to this Hawaiian treat, I actually had to track down the Clark’s Island Donuts food truck location and make a trip north up to Cedar Hills, taking a box of a dozen filled malasadas back to my home in Santaquin.
While clearly not quite the distance I would now have to travel to the nearest Beard Papa’s in Las Vegas, the additional miles to track down this mobile donut shop were clearly worth it.
Fifth, be sure to taste everything on the menu.
While I often craved those beautiful cream puffs at Beard Papa’s, there were other amazing menu items just begging to be eaten — the Chocolate Fondant Cake and the occasional milk chocolate-filled cream puff were also favorites.
Likewise, Clark’s Island Donuts offers other menu items. As the seasons get colder, the food truck is now offering hot chocolates in various flavors, a great complement to my favorite menu item — the Haole (pronounced how-lee).
For $4 you can dress up your favorite malasada in the most decadent way possible by topping it with ripples of fresh whipped cream and either strawberries or fresh peaches. With the hot, filled donut (I chose the custard-filled) slowly melting the whipped cream, this is a treat you should eat right away to fully experience all the delicious flavors.
Those wanting to try their own malasada at Clark’s Island Donuts can have their chance at the upcoming BYU Cougars Football home games. The food truck will be located inside the stadium serving up fresh donuts to all who want to say aloha to this Hawaiian favorite.
Clark’s Island Donuts
Prices: $1.50 for unfilled, $1.75 for filled, $4 for Haole, $16 for dozen filled.
Info: www.clarksislanddonuts.com, Facebook.com/clarksislanddonuts, @Clarks_ID on Instagram and Twitter