TRY THIS: EASY HOMEMADE CRONUTS

Hey guys, have you heard about this brand new food trend: cronuts? Probably not because it hasn't really hit the Internet yet. 

Yeah, I'm totally cutting edge. I know. I congratulate myself all the time. "Emma the trendsetter" they call me. 

Jk. Cronuts are not new. Everyone is way into them. I'm late. So I'm really, really excited to try some homemade cronuts sometime in my near future. I'd love to try this recipe, or this one, or maybe this one. We'll see. But as you can guess, cronuts (like many donut recipes) tend to be a little labor-intensive. I love a good kitchen challenge, but I also like easy stuff. I'm lazy sometimes.

So this made me curious... What would be the best ready-made dough to use when you want to make lazy cronuts?

I tried two different doughs. I bought some puff pastry and also some crescent roll dough. Seamless. Yep. I said these are lazy cronuts, and I wasn't joking.

Guys, one of these made some really yummy donuts... while the other was... not the best. Are you on the edge of your seat yet???

First up, I layered each dough before cutting it into donuts. This is how you get all those crazy layers in a cronut. This also means you'll only get 3-6 cronuts out of each package. So, if you wanna make a ton, you better buy a lot of dough. That's a pro tip. You're welcome.

Next, I fried the dough (I used canola oil) at around 350°F. For the puff pastry dough, I fried for about 45-50 seconds on each side. For the crescent roll dough, I fried for about 30 seconds on each side. A good rule of thumb in deep frying (non-meat) items is they should be done within about 60 seconds total. But always do one first, cut it open and see. If it looks undercooked then you'll want to adjust your fry time, not temperture. 

After frying, I removed the cronuts to a plate lined with paper towels to soak up excess grease. Then I made a glaze from 1 cup powdered sugar and a few teaspoons of water whisked in. 

The cronuts on the right side are made from crescent roll dough. As you can see, they cooked all the way through while the outside was crispy. Fluffy inside, crispy outside is exactly what we were going for. These were delicious!

The puff pastry cronuts did not work as well. They remained doughy on the inside while the outside was fully cooked. I did try cooking a few even longer and found that they would burn on the outside while the inside remained undercooked. 

Since the puff pastry cronuts seemed to be too dense, I decided to try a few with less layers. So I just cut out one layer of puff pastry and fried that. It was better, but still kind of greasy while sort of undercooked in the center. I will say the puff pastry had a better, buttery taste than the crescent roll dough. But if you want easy cronuts, stick with crescent roll dough. 

Thanks for coming with me on this cronut kitchen experiment. :)