Tasty Tuesday: The Lite-Hearted Donut

This week’s Tasty Tuesday is just for our Cincinnati/Dayton-area readers. I’m going to tell you how you can get free donuts — and not just free, but lower-fat, lower-calorie donuts that taste just like Busken Bakery’s regular donuts.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Busken is introducing the Lite-Hearted Donut. It’s a heart-shaped glazed donut with 140 calories, 2.5 grams of fat, and zero trans fat and zero saturated fat. Compare that to a normal Busken glazed donut, which has 300 calories and 16 grams of fat.

Normally I would NOT be helping promote a lower-fat,  lower-calorie baked good treat. If I’m going to indulge, I prefer fully loaded. “Low-fat/calorie” usually = a pale imitation of the original. Sorry, but I’d rather just have a bowl of fresh berries.

But Busken’s PR folks hand-delivered a dozen Lite-Hearted Donuts to my house today, so we all had a chance to try them. I can honestly say that they taste exactly like regular glazed Busken donuts. If you had handed me one of these and not told me it was a “light” donut I would never have known. And I have pretty sensitive tastebuds. My kids, husband and I gobbled them up. (I guess that begs the question whether a lower-fat/calorie donut really is lower-fat/calorie if you eat several in one sitting, but that’s my own demon to wrestle with…)

Anyway, consider this my full-hearted endorsement of the Lite-Hearted Donut. And if you want to try it, then get to a Busken Bakery, Remke-Biggs or Cincinnati/Dayton United Dairy Farmers this Thursday, February 14. They’ll be giving away one free Lite-Hearted Donut to every customer while supplies last.

You can also visit a Busken Pop-Up Shop, located at 1218 Vine Street in the heart of Over-the-Rhine, for a free donut and an art gallery-inspired donut experience. The shop will be open every Thursday (7 p.m.-12 a.m.), Friday (7 p.m.-1 a.m.) and Saturday (7 p.m.-1 a.m.) Feb. 14-March 16.