I like croissants. I like donuts. I heard about the queues, the price, the legend.
I did it. I made a cronut.
I did it. I made a cronut.
....but in the quickest, short-cutting and cheating way that I could, with a little help from Edd Kimber too*. There's no making dough two days prior, very little method or utensils involved. But there is lots of anxiety - which you then combat with an amazing cronut at the end, so - swings and roundabouts.
What I Used
1 tin of Jus-Rol Croissant Dough (=150g)
Vegetable Oil
Icing Sugar / Sprinkles
Cookie Cutters
Rolling Pin / Board / Saucepan / Slotted Spoon
To start, I opened my can of croissant dough with a horrible realisation that this was a lot of dough for one person. I was pretty sure that this better turn out OK as people were going to have these forced on them later in the day. [You can also be safe in the knowledge that if it doesn't work out, you can roll these in to croissants, like they're supposed to be]. Also, this dough is ready. It literally tries to escape from the can:
The dough is pre-cut, ready to make in to croissants, so needs to be rolled until it combines. This is tough. The dough wants a fight and I was conscious of making the dough tougher and was unsure how this might effect the outcome. But I persevered and eventually, the dough combined:
Roll out [again, a bit of a fight, but stand your ground!] to around 1cm thick and then taking my TKMaxx purchase of the month, I cut 2 1/4 inch rounds and then smaller 1 1/2 inch rounds inside:
I wont lie, I thought these looked like they were on the skinny side, so I also cut two more with
2 5/8 inch rounds.
Placing on a lined tray, my initial thought was should I leave to keep shape in the fridge or leave to proof? So I did both - leaving on the cooker top for about 10 minutes whilst I tidied things away, preheated my oven to 200 degrees C and then chilled in the fridge:
I then filled 1/3 of my saucepan [nothing special, just your average] with vegetable oil and brought to a heat below simmering, but when dropping a test small section of dough, sizzled at the sides of the dough and gave me chip-pan fire anxiety:
I removed my cronuts from the fridge and then carefully added a cronut and allowed it to fry
for around 30 seconds:
..turned for another 30 seconds and then removed to a towel lined bowl whilst I completed the rest. As far as the skinny worries were concerned - the cronuts do puff out, so this worked out fine for my liking. I also popped the middles in - no waste here where the cronuts were concerned:
I wont lie. The frying part terrified me. I had damp tea towels on standby, my mobile ready to call the Fire Brigade and visions of burning my apartment block down all for the sake of trying a cronut in my head. But it wasn't too bad. I took my time, made one at a time and by the end, was feeling pretty chef-y about it all. But in all seriousness, be careful.
To make sure they were completely cooked through, I popped them in my pre-heated oven for around 10 minutes. I calmed down from the anxiety of the frying pan, and made up a range of icing flavours and toppings ready to decorate:
My favourites were triple chocolate:
Strawberry icing and freeze-dried topping:
and fluro-lemon drizzle:
I covered the cronut middles in plain caster sugar:
...and then, obviously, had to taste them all:
Compared to my first ever attempt at macarons/macaroons, my first attempt at cronuts was a success. All were edible, they tasted so good and it was just as quick and simple as I am used to in my cooking and baking. Now, I can't claim that these are just as good / match up to the real thing - or qualify as real cronuts - but for me, these will more than do. Four in one sitting will also do quite nicely.
I'm making more next weekend with the can I have in the fridge and I'm going to make them
slightly bigger, slightly thicker and might experiment further with toppings and maybe fillings for those that like them [not me - who came up with the jam centre? who?].
slightly bigger, slightly thicker and might experiment further with toppings and maybe fillings for those that like them [not me - who came up with the jam centre? who?].
*
To save Edd from hunting me down for daring to associate his name with this cheater method, I'd just like to say I purely used Edd's weight measurements and method for guidance. He did the ingredients part properly, like the Boss he is.
