No. This is a long, rectangular yeast doughnut smeared thickly with maple icing and then topped with a hefty strip of fried bacon — one of those what-the-hell taste experiences not for the faint of heart.

For the doughnut hound, the next point of interest is Danville, where Joe Biden and Paul Ryan took the stage at Centre College for the vice-presidential debate in October. It is a town of about 18,000 that regularly pops up on lists of America’s most livable places, although it is invisible to the majority of motorists, who circle Danville on the Route 127 bypass.

That timesaver is a huge mistake. Route 127 proper leads straight into town along a broad thoroughfare lined with imposing, architecturally distinguished homes. Sweeping past the picture-postcard campus of Centre College, a small liberal arts institution, Route 127 becomes Main Street, which is as all-American and appealing as the name suggests. A cool cafe, the Hub, serves up-to-the-minute sandwiches and complicated coffees. The Main Street payoff is Burke’s Bakery and Delicatessen, located a couple of blocks past the Hub and run by the same family for four generations.

“Delicatessen” obviously has a different meaning in Kentucky than it does in New York, something like “an establishment that sells chicken salad.”

It’s a safe bet that most of the customers are not going for the chicken. The baked goods are the draw, a wide variety of coffee cakes and pies, with a first-class lineup of chubby cake doughnuts iced in chocolate, vanilla and maple. Some are rolled in toasted coconut, others in cake crumbs. Still others are dusted with cinnamon sugar. All have a fresh, fluffy interior. Do not overlook the sugary cinnamon-pecan pinwheels, flat swirls of dough with nut bits embedded in hidden creases.

South of Danville, the landscape changes. Gentle swelling fields becoming rolling hills, which become limestone uplands with hills huddling close together. The look is very English. Meandering local roads twist and turn, dip and swoop, as they pass by patches of corn, soybeans or tobacco. Wildflowers line the route, contributing tiny bursts of color: white Queen Anne’s lace, yellow-petaled black-eyed Susans, sky-blue chicory, purplish Joe Pye weed, magenta meadow phlox, blazing-red trumpet vines. Sudden dips in the road lead to cool, forested nooks, canopied with yellow poplars, red maples and hickory trees.