Hopping on the Cronut bandwagon

This dough took three days to make. Well, two and a half.

When my friends Beadon and Shirley asked me if I'd be up to giving Cronuts a go, I gladly said yes as I love a good challenge. While Cronuts aren't too difficult to make, the recipe is long and the process is longer.

And if I didn't make myself clear before, it takes time. Lots of time to make these doughnut-croissant hybrid dessert.

Was it worth the effort? Lord, yes.

 Will I make them again? Well, no. I don't think so. At least not anytime soon.

I followed the recipe Dominique Ansel (the chef who thought this up and executed it) posted online and it was accurate and clear and very, very long. Like short-story long.

It's like making puff pastry dough, many say. Well, yes and no. It takes a lot longer because the dough is a combination of doughnut and puff pastry. It is a yeasted dough and with any yeasted dough, you need to let it rise and rest and rise again.

And then, you need to go the puff pastry route and add a block of butter in the dough and fold it, rest it, fold it, rest it (up to 5 times) before you can actually start shaping the darn thing.

I should have taken more photos but I was pre-occupied - I spent all my time hoping that this will all work out. Effort is one thing. But effort for naught? That's torture.

So the only photos I have of the process were taken by my husband who was trying some arty-farty black and white photography with his new camera. They aren't that clear but I'll upload them anyway.
Contain your expectations and they should be ok.

With this one batch of dough, I could make about 30 cronuts. I tried baking the first few - they tasted good but they just didn't puff up. And they were crispy rather than flaky. And then I deep fried them as per the recipe and they puffed up immediately. I guess, with cronuts, the healthy version will be slightly lesser in terms of taste and texture.

So, cronuts. Worth the hype? Well, yes because they really are DIVINE. The only way I can describe it is that you feel you kinda feel confused: it's like a flaky, buttery croissant AND a soft, pillowy, doughnut ALL AT ONCE.

It's genius and I love it.