Introducing the Cronut, a Doughnut-Croissant Hybrid That May Very Well Change Your Life

Beneath the rose glaze lies some pretty genius pastry engineering.

The trendy hot pastry nowadays is the “Cronut” because it’s part croissant and part doughnut the pastry chef is, appropriately, calling it a cronut. (Go ahead, say cwaahh-nut, you know, French style.) Each one of these puppies is made from pastry dough that’s been sheeted, laminated, proofed, then fried like a doughnut and rolled in flavored sugar. But that’s not all: Cronuts-to-be are also filled with a not-so-sweet Tahitian vanilla cream, given a fresh coat of rose glaze, and bedazzled with rose sugar. Got it? Good. Let’s briefly examine the sheer implausibility and engineering genius that goes into each one of these things.

First off, call your friendly neighborhood pastry chef and ask him or her what happens when you try to fry croissant dough. It’s not pretty. Even if the laminated layers don’t separate instantly and part ways in the hot oil six ways to Sunday, chances are that yeast-leavened dough will have a lumpy, sad, and uneven ascent before it ever gets to the golden brown stage The trick seems to be to fry it in grapeseed oil at one specific (and somewhat secret) temperature.

The fried cronut looks like this on the inside:

To finish, it’s filled with cream, another feat that’s also a bit difficult to pull off in a pastry that has a punched-out center hole. The finished cronut tastes a lot like a classic glazed doughnut, but much more awesome.

If you’re thinking of baking the perfect “Cronut” with your team, we have just the program for you! Just Desserts will bring you a delicious teambuilding activity while you bond with your team.