As an anti-hipster, I only discovered the cronut long after it stopped being cool. This sugary pastry was popular on social media an eternity ago (ie, four years) and represents a combination of a croissant and a donut.
The cronut was invented by Dominque Ansel at his bakery in New York as a combination of a croissant and a doughnut – the shape and flavoring of a donut, combined with the texture and dough of a croissant. It enjoyed instant success, with queues forming days after it was invented in 2013. I enjoyed my first one at his London bakery in Victoria (just near the Coach Station).
Trying to merely describe a cronut’s taste sort of misses the point: eating a cronut is all about the texture, since the awfully sugary cronut is very sweet. Not only is it thickly dusted in sugar, but it contains a caramel filling for a second dose of sugar.
The texture of the cronut, however, is outstanding: it is strong and crunchy, but not particularly flaky: the consequence of three days of baking, frying, and so on. The cronut’s croissant heritage is also reflected in the internal cross-section of the pasty, where you can see the air bubbles within. These bubbles are important to the cronut’s texture, because they ensure that the product is not too dense (and provides a space for the filling to live).
The cronut is an excellent pastry, and is well worth trying.
