Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

When most peo­ple pic­ture a dough­nut, a clas­sic glaze or even a choco­late-cov­ered ring with colour­ful sprin­kles might come to mind. But 24-year-old part-time chef Sharde Trim­ming­ham is swap­ping the pre­dictable fill­ings and top­pings for cre­ations in­spired by lo­cal flavours and gourmet in­gre­di­ents.

Earl Grey-in­fused pas­try cream, rum-and-caramel ic­ing, Bis­coff cook­ies and even ce­re­al flakes are just some of the in­gre­di­ents that have found their way on­to Trim­ming­ham’s dough­nuts at Dough Club TT, with each cre­ation more imag­i­na­tive than the last.

“Com­ing from a culi­nary back­ground, you want to try new things all the time, and that was one of my main mot­tos, to try some­thing new. So, I just start­ed try­ing to in­clude some lo­cal flavours as well as some west­ern­ised stuff,” Trim­ming­ham said.

The Diego Mar­tin res­i­dent said her culi­nary jour­ney be­gan at just eight years old, when she start­ed learn­ing to make callaloo, red beans, roti with var­i­ous talka­ri dish­es, bread pud­ding and cin­na­mon rolls along­side her moth­er. In 2021, while work­ing as an ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­fes­sion­al, she en­rolled in a pro­gramme at the Caribbean Culi­nary Arts and Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Com­pa­ny.

That same year, she and one of her sis­ters start­ed ex­per­i­ment­ing with dough­nuts.“We al­ways got re­quests to do dough­nuts from fam­i­ly friends, and that slow­ly spi­ralled in­to want­i­ng to do some­thing a lit­tle more dif­fer­ent. The one that was trend­ing at the time was the brioche dough­nut, so we test­ed it out vig­or­ous­ly,” she re­called.

Trim­ming­ham ex­plained that brioche dough­nuts are made with an en­riched dough con­tain­ing re­al but­ter and eggs, which re­sults in a soft­er and rich­er tex­ture. She added that, un­like many com­mer­cial­ly pro­duced dough­nuts, they con­tain few, if any, preser­v­a­tives or dough con­di­tion­ers.

Dough Club has el­e­vat­ed the brioche dough­nut ex­pe­ri­ence with bold and in­no­v­a­tive flavours, such as Black­ber­ry and White Choco­late, Ap­ples and Rum, Matcha Mad­ness and Oreo Cream Cheese.

How­ev­er, Trim­ming­ham shared that in­cor­po­rat­ing lo­cal flavours is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to her.

“I think I’m a good cook be­cause I’m a Trinida­di­an. Our food is so amaz­ing and it has taught me a lot, be­cause mak­ing the dish­es could be very tech­ni­cal in ways. I learned a lot from cook­ing our own food, and I just want­ed to make sure that I in­cor­po­rat­ed our flavours in­to the dough­nuts, which you don’t see that of­ten,” she not­ed.

That’s why she has in­tro­duced flavours such as pas­sion fruit and benne ball, with the lat­ter prov­ing to be a re­al head-turn­er.

“I love get­ting benne ball when you go to To­ba­go. I try my best not to make the ac­tu­al dough­nuts too sweet be­cause it has to be bal­anced, so while the benne ball is sug­ar-based, I had to test the cream a cou­ple of times to make sure that it was not too sweet,” she ad­mit­ted.

Ac­cord­ing to Trim­ming­ham, she put in a lot of ef­fort to make sure it tast­ed as close as pos­si­ble to the ac­tu­al benne ball.

“I just de­con­struct­ed it a bit and made it in­to a dough­nut. There is the crack­ly coat­ing on top, and it tastes ex­act­ly like a benne ball. On the in­side, it’s a pra­line with the sesame seeds, and al­though the flavour of the cream in­side might be a new ex­pe­ri­ence, it does taste like you’re bit­ing in­to a benne ball,” she de­scribed.

But while a benne ball dough­nut may sound un­con­ven­tion­al, Trim­ming­ham’s ex­per­i­men­ta­tion with bold flavours doesn’t stop there.

Among her more over-the-top cre­ations is the Cin­na­mon Toast dough­nut, which is in­fused with warm spices, coat­ed with cin­na­mon-flavoured ic­ing and topped with Cin­na­mon Toast Crunch ce­re­al. An­oth­er favourite is the Caramel Crunch, which is filled with dulce de leche cream and topped with caramel sauce and caramel pop­corn.

Trim­ming­ham said many of her dough­nut cre­ations are in­spired by her favourite foods and drinks. That’s why she plans to in­tro­duce a cof­fee-flavoured dough­nut next month, along with sev­er­al oth­er new cre­ations.

Look­ing ahead, she hopes to one day open her own restau­rant. Un­til then, cus­tomers can ex­pect her to keep whip­ping up in­ven­tive flavours that prove her cre­ativ­i­ty knows no bounds.