by Bottom Line: The Egg, Cheese, Sausage & Jalapeno kolache from Shipley’s Donuts offers a tasty and filling breakfast, but it could use a few more peppers to kick up the heat.
Kolaches are a breakfast staple in Texas. Czech in origin (though some will argue Polish or other nationalities), they are essentially yeast rolls topped with fruit filling or stuffed with meat (usually sausage) and cheese (you can read more about this tasty treat here). Brought to the state by European immigrants, kolaches have become about as common for the morning meal as breakfast tacos.
Texas-based donut chain Shipley’s has had kolaches on their menu for a long time (they are a pretty standard item for donut shops in this state), though I was not previously a fan of their version. They made some changes at some point, though, and I have found their jalapeno, sausage, and cheese kolaches to be quite good. And recently, they expanded their line by cracking open an egg, and I stopped by to try their new egg, cheese, sausage, and jalapeno version.
To start off with, this is a rather sizable stuffed roll. They refer to it as a breakfast sandwich on the posters in the store, and that seems quite accurate. The roll is soft and pillowy with a bit of sweetness, and it is not too thick so that it holds everything together well but does not dominate the sandwich. I actually believe they used to fry their kolaches many years ago, but they appear to have learned the error of their ways and started baking the rolls as they should be.
The egg seems freshly scrambled, and there is a good bit of that in the roll. The crumbled-up breakfast sausage has good savory taste with a bit of a peppery kick. The cheese is creamy with some nice sharpness. The jalapenos are the pickled type and they are sliced, and they offer some tang and a good kick. But they are few and far between, and I would have preferred more in the roll. Actually, they should chop those up for better distribution so that you get a little bit in each bite.
As for the heat, that comes from the jalapenos, and when you get a bite with those it is close to Medium on my scale. But the bites without are below Mild, so overall I would push this to the Mild level. Now, I am not necessarily looking for a lot of heat with my morning coffee, but those bites with the jalapenos sure were tasty and I would have liked more of those. Still, this is quite a good kolache overall, and I will certainly stop by for another of these.
I did not see any nutrition information for the kolache, but as mentioned, it is rather sizable, and I am guessing it is somewhere in the 400 to 500 calorie range. That alone is not bad, but you are not going to walk into a donut shop and come out without a donut, so that will add to the tally. I love their maple-covered donuts, and that adds at least another 250 cals, so be careful, otherwise, you will be having to add some extra time on the treadmill.
The new kolaches run from $2.99 (just egg and cheese) to $3.49 (meat, egg, and cheese), which is not bad. But once I added the donut and coffee, I was in the $7.50 range with tax. Still, that’s not too bad for the drive-thru these days for a filling breakfast. I was a little late in getting around to reviewing these, and the kolaches are scheduled to head back to Limited-Time-Only-Ville at the end of the month. Hopefully, sales have been strong, though, and they will eventually land on the permanent menu.
