Doughnut aficionados around the world would’ve celebrated International Donut Day on June 2 with all manner of deep fried sweet treats. As well as the usual hole-in-the-middle variations, the doughnut family embraces churros in Spain, India’s syrupy-sweet gulab jamun, and in Japan, black sugar doughnuts hailing from the island of Okinawa. It could very well be called the holey-est day of the calendar year.
Doughnut Day may have come and gone, but Australia’s love for doughnuts of all shapes and sizes shows no signs of waning. In fact, Sydney now has a doughnut worthy of international attention all on its own.
Enter the aptly titled Glonut, the latest creation from BlackStar Pastry in NSW. Introduced in line with Sydney’s Vivid Festival of lights, music and ideas, glonuts are the doughnuts we all know and love, topped with glow-in-the-dark icing. Glonuts are the product of a year’s worth of research and testing by the Black Star team – not only did they figure out how to get the icing to glow beneath a blacklight, but they made the icing taste good, too. The icing is made from riboflavin (vitamin B) and yuzu, and contains nothing artificial.
“The glonut is based on our BlackStar donut, which is like a brioche with half the butter, so it’s light and not at all greasy," says Chris Thé from BlackStar. “The magic is in the icing. The ingredient that makes the icing glow is made from Vitamin B, which in itself is quite acidic. We decided to ice the donut in a yuzu glaze, which is also quite tart so there’s a balance of sweet and sour on the butter donut."
What with glow in the dark doughnuts, and glow in the dark fairy floss spotted at Vivid Sydney at places including Banksii and the Overseas Passenger terminal, as well as Disneyland outlets in the US, we might just be on to a global trend.
If you’re in Sydney, you can find glonuts at the Glow Cave Dessert Bar at Martin Place until June 17.
