Homemade Donuts from The Coffee Shop

You may know Rockport, Massachusetts for its little red shack at the end of the pier, its picturesque harbor crowded with fishing boats, but do you know about its donuts?

The best, the absolute best, homemade donuts come from a sliver of a place on Rockport’s Main St., just across from the Congregational Church, which is the biggest, whitest building in town, and still has a Revolutionary War cannonball lodged in its steeple.

The truest test of an excellent donut is that you don’t want to confuse its simplicity with cinnamon, crème, or, god forbid, chocolate.  The Coffee Shop donuts are food perfection plain: a delicately crunchy outer layer that collapses at one’s tooth, revealing a perfect cake of pale yellow crumb.  Match it with a black cup of coffee and you have one of the world’s best marriages, akin to foie gras and sauterne.

The building, one door and one window wide, is so unassuming one can’t believe anything special happens inside, and that’s the way Rockporters like it.  A plain sign says “Coffee Shop,” no reference, except for the wooden rolling pin below, to the humble treats stacked on trays within.

Walk in on a cold January morning, or even a hot July afternoon, and it’s only Rockporters on the stools at the counter.  It’s as if the shops in town that sell muffins and cinnamon buns were put there by the sly Swedes (Rockport is heavily Scandinavian) as red herrings to keep the tourists from discovering the secret, delicious donuts.  The Coffee Shop, by the way, also sells wonderful Swedish Coffee Rolls and Nisu bread.