Cronuts and Croissants

YUM.

Cronut fever has died down a bit, but I made these at the height of the media frenzy just to see if I could. You know what, they were bloomin' yummy. Super chuffed, you should all try at home. I picked up some great tips from the wonderful Jo Wheatley (Winner of GBB2011) at her blog Jo's Blue Aga, although I will confess hers look far more yummy than mine.

Definition: A cronut is a deep fried donut shaped croissant. BUT BETTER

The reason I have coupled a range of other pastries into this post is that the pastry dough used in all is the same. Make up a batch and have a beautifully butter heavy day with friends and family. I can tell you they did not last long at all in my house.

CRONUTS

• Decide how much of your dough (see recipe here) you want to allocate to Cronuts. I went with 1/3^rd for cronuts, 1/3^rd for pain au chocolat/raisin and 1/3^rd for plain croissants. Cut this amount off the main block of dough with a bread knife, and put the rest back in the fridge.

• Decide on how you want your cronuts- sugar coated? Glazed? Drizzled in chocolate and filled with cream? You can have a real mixture, and have great fun playing around with flavours. I went for cinnamon sugar coated cronuts filled with vanilla cream. The world is your baking oyster- go for flavour combinations you love.

• Roll the dough out to around 3.5 cm thick, and then use a round cutter to cut out your donuts. To create the hole in the middle, find something that is at smaller than half the width of the original cutter you used- Jo suggested the larger end of a piping bag nozzle which worked a treat for my mini circles. Put these in the fridge/freezer for at least an hour so they are super cold.

• If you have a deep fat fryer, great- use it. I do not, however, and so I shallow fried them in a deep frying pan, a ton of oil and some guess work on temperature. Use your worst looking cronut to test- they should turn golden brown after a few minutes on each side, and the pastry inside should be flaky and buttery. Burnt on the outside and raw on the inside? The temperature is too high. Once fried, toss them in your sugar to coat- I mixed caster sugar with cinnamon for a twist. Fill with cream if desired- best eaten warm!
  

  

         

CROISSANTS

This is just a different way of shaping the dough - how you flavour them is up to you. I am going to try some savoury croissants next for Brunch, but for this blog I have just coated them in a touch of apricot jam to get that lovely shiny look.

Roll the dough out to about 1 cm thick, and cut out a large circle - I used a large dinner plate. Divide the circle into 8 ( like you would a pizza) and seperate the slices. Roll each one out a bit wider with your rolling pin, and then proceed to roll them up from the outside (the crust of the pizza) to the inside, tucking in the pointy end.

Leave in a warm place to prove for 30-40 minutes, whilst pre-heating the oven to 200C. Cover with an egg wash and bake on a baking tray for 20-25 minutes. Immediately wash with a small amount of melted apricot jam. BEAUTIFUL.

Rachel x