Chef Ian Kleinman won’t be getting much sleep this week. From now until Saturday, January 30, in addition to handling the regular operations of his Ballpark ice cream shop, the Inventing Room, Kleinman will also be rising at 2 a.m. each morning to craft his specialty doughnuts.

Although this is the Kleinman’s fifth time launching a pop-up doughnut shop, it’s the first one to be held in the brick-and-mortar location of the Inventing Room, which opened last Halloween. Kleinman says that the pop-up approach is a good way to work with a different medium (the doughnut), plus it’s a unique marketing approach.

And, like his marketing strategy, Kleinman takes a unique approach to baking his doughnuts. As with most of the Inventing Room’s offerings, these treats are full of molecular flourishes and Willy Wonka-esque twists. “We try to make people comfortable with the ingredients and combinations,” Kleinman says of the menu. “People are a lot more willing to try things that they know, so doughnuts are a great medium. We can take that classic and use some of the new ingredients and techniques we have acquired over the last eight to 10 years.”

Take the Boston cream pie flavor. This doughnut is filled with cream and topped with a chocolate blanket, cake crumbs, and exploding whipped cream. Like little popcorn kernels, the shards of sweet “exploding” whipped cream really do pop off the plate (the secret is liquid nitrogen).

Although the most popular flavors so far include the French toast (griddled and topped with maple syrup ice cream and butter) and the baklava (with honey pastry cream, cinnamon phyllo, and candied rose and pistachio), the limited-edition Broncos doughnut is the most exciting. Before each pop-up, Kleinman opens up a submission form on his website for customers to enter their own doughnut ideas. The Broncos doughnut was the winner out of more than 200 entries. This festive number is filled with cream and blueberry jelly (dotted with real blueberries), and topped with exploding “Orange Crush” whipped cream.

While Kleinman admits that some of his crazy ideas don’t always work, the Broncos doughnut is a sweet, sweet touchdown. Let’s just hope we see many more of those come February 7.

The doughnut pop-up runs from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. now through Saturday, January 30.

2020 Lawrence St., 303-885-2802