Cronut

I'm sure everybody knows by now that something called a cronut has taken New York by storm. A deep-fried croissant-doughnut hybrid, which people start queuing up for at 5am, before the bakery sells out of them within 15 minutes. One unstable individual apparently cried when she arrived that little bit too late to buy one. Other people travel hundreds of miles, or even pay $100 for someone else to wait in line and buy one for them. I'm sure they're good... in fact, they look amazing... but even if I lived in NY, getting up at 5am or paying some chancer $100 just doesn't make any sense to me.

As you can imagine, the cronut hasn't reach South London yet - but where there's a will, there's a way. Croissant dough is notoriously technical and time consuming to make, but something caught my eye in the supermarket freezer cabinet the other day... ready-to-bake croissants!

The first step in transforming these into cronuts is obviously to defrost them, and then squidge them all together and roll them out. In an effort to attain vaguely even flaky layers, I rolled out the dough, folded it, and repeated a few times. Finally it was time to cut out the doughnut shapes. I only managed to get three out of it... and there wasn't much dough wasted.

I'm sure if you're doing this properly you should heat the oil to a specific temperature, but I never bother with any of that stuff. It's best just to test the temperature with a little left-over dough... I reckon you want it so the 'nuts bubble gently as soon as they hit the oil, without sizzling too violently. At this sort of temperature, they should cook through without burning, or absorbing too much oil and therefore becoming greasy (heaven forbid). They should take around 2 minutes to cook.

Thankfully they puffed up very well, and the outside was nice and crisp. I fancied a maple glaze on my cronuts, so I mixed some icing sugar with maple syrup and a little water. I dunked them into the icing so they were half covered, then left them to set for a few minutes.

 

I stopped short of awarding them the full 11/11 out of respect for the definitive version, but while these might not be as good (or as light) as the real deal, they were pretty bloody good. In fact, I polished off all three in no time at all. I didn't have to go to all the way to NY, and I didn't have to get up in the middle of the night or pay the price of a prime steak dinner.

 

 

 

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