It’s like a lumberjack breakfast on a donut. It is the warm Maple, Bacon and Egg Long John available at South County’s Ex Cop Donut Shop. It elevates the whole maple-bacon donut craze to another plane.
We know what you’re thinking – eggs on a donut sounds a mite funky. Perish the thought, because the eggs, which are scrambled, integrate perfectly with the bacon, maple frosting, and donut itself, like a breakfast platter where the maple syrup has sensually invaded every zone on the dish. (My mom used to take the leftover beaten eggs from making French toast and dump them into the hot pan, making buttery scrambled eggs, onto which I promptly poured syrup. Awesome. You get the idea.) The donut actually tastes a bit like a pancake in this context.
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The ex-cops at Ex Cop, couple Frank and Linda Loforte (above), serve this innovative donut warmed, and it’s dynamically delicious. You’ll probably hit a fried fat/carbs/sugar satiety wall well before you reach the end of this weighty barge of breakfast, but you’ll feel compelled to finish it anyway. It’s potent stuff.
The donut palace, tucked away in a strip mall in Oakville, has been quietly conducting sweet, sweet experiments and turning out the results for lucky customers.
The Lofortes make “candified” donuts with toppings like crumbled Butterfinger (above right) or Nestle Crunch. They make an Oreo donut (above left) that looks like half a box of Oreos was crumbled onto each one. Each pistachio donut is topped with a rocky field of chopped nuts. A chocolate espresso-bean donut (made with Kaldi’s coffee beans) will amp you up like a double shot with lotsa sugar. Nothing is skimped-on here.
Kids love the coral-blue cotton candy and hot pink bubble-gum donuts (below left). Both–couldya guess?–are super-sweet.
A Sicilian Crème donut with sweet ricotta filling is coated in a crunchy “breading” and double-fried. Another donut is filled with Nutella pastry cream. And there’s one reminiscent of strawberry cheesecake (above right).
The owners have plans to do banana split-flavored donuts and one flavored with peanut-butter-and-jelly.
Frank’s Italian-American upbringing has yielded recipes for cannoli and Italian cookies like the “pistachio amore,” anise taralli cookies and biscotti (at left), all for sale at the shop, too. (Frank’s “Uncle Sam” is Marconi Baking owner Sam Licata).
At one point the Lofortes went to Belgium and fell in love with authentic yeast-raised Belgian waffles, and though they offer them at Ex Cop, you have to call ahead because each one takes an hour, said Linda. “These waffles are so heavenly you won’t want syrup on them,” she added.
In their former lives, both Frank and Linda toiled for the St. Louis City P.D. They’ve endured plenty of cop/donut jokes, they said, and by naming their bakery the Ex Cop Donut Shop, they’ve turned the joke on its head.
“We earned the right to name it [the shop] this because we were harassed about donuts,” said Frank, “so we put it right out there.”
Besides, he added, making donuts is a great relief after what he endured in his former vocation.
“Donuts don’t shoot at you,” he said, pithily.
Ex Cop Donut Shop
4584 Telegraph
314-894-2677
www.facebook.com/ExCopDonutShop
The Maple-Bacon Donut available Tues – Sun
The Maple-Bacon-Egg Donut available on weekends
