The first I've had a Cornut was on one of my trips to London at Dominic Ansel's patisserie, Dominic is the pastry chef invented this wonderful thing that took the foodies world by storm.
If you haven’t heard of it yet, a cronut is a donut made out of croissant dough.
Sounds awesome right ?! It's really awesome!
So I've decided to challenge myself and attempt to make it myself.
Requires a lot of time and attention, but it totally pays off. The result was great.
Ingredients:
For the dough:
250g of '00' Caputo patisserie flour (or bread flour)
250g of all-purpose flour
20g of dry yeast
40g of sugar + a teaspoon
180ml milk
2 eggs
225 grams of butter at room temperature (100 grams for dough and 125 grams for folding)
10g of salt
For the lemon glaze:
100g of powdered sugar
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons heavy cream (or milk)
Lemon zest
For sugar coating and salted caramel:
Sugar
Salted caramel sauce (you can find a recipe here)
Preparation:
Dough-
Heat the milk to be lukewarm, pour it into the mixer bowl together with the yeast and a teaspoon of sugar. Stir and let the mixture rest for about 10 minutes.
Add the flours, sugar, eggs and salt.
Mix in a mixer for a minute on low speed.
Raise the speed to medium speed and start adding the butter (100 g) gradually until completely incorporated into the dough.
Knead the dough for 5-6 minutes until the dough separates from the bowl. The dough should be smooth and soft. If necessary, continue to knead it until you get to the desired result.
Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for about an hour and a half until it almost tripled in size.
After the the dough has risen, transfer to the work surface, knead it in order to lower it a bit.
Then fold it into a rectangular envelope shape.
Transfer to a tray and cover with plastic wrap.
Put it in the freezer for 10 minutes, turn it over and put it in the freezer for another 10 minutes.
Then store it in the refrigerator overnight.
Folding-
In the morning: Remove the dough from the refrigerator and transfer it to a lightly floured work surface.
Roll out the dough using a rolling pin into a long rectangle, spread a soft butter (125 grams) all over it and fold a third of the rectangle inwards and fold the third from the other side over it.
Place in a tray, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.
Remove the dough from the refrigerator, re-open it with a rolling pin into a rectangular shape and fold as in the previous step. (No need to spread butter again, only in the first fold)
Wrap in plastic wrap and return it to the refrigerator for another hour.
Repeat this operation once more - roll out the dough, fold it and this time put it for half an hour in the refrigerator.
And one last time, roll out the dough into a rectangular shape, fold it on both sides (a third on each side) and put it back in the refrigerator for another half hour.
take out the dough from the refrigerator and transfer it to a lightly floured work surface, roll it out with a rolling pin and keep the rectangular shape.
Cut donut circles, using a donut cutter or a round cookie cutter, and cut another small circle in the center to create a donut shape.
Let the cronuts rise for 20-30 minutes until it reach a height of 3 centimetres.
While it rising, heat oil in a deep frying pan.
When the oil is hot and the cronuts are puffed enough, transfer it into the oil. Very carefully, you do not want to ruin their shape.
Fry them for a minute and a quarter on each side. If they get golden-brown too quickly - the oil is too hot and you need to lower the heat. The desired color is golden, not brown.
Transfer to a tray with absorbent paper.
Lemon Glaze:
Mix the powdered sugar together with the cream and lemon juice until you get a thick and smooth mixture.
Dip the top of the cronut in the glaze and sprinkle some lemon zest.
Sugar and salted caramel:
Dip the cronut in sugar and coat it all.
Gently drizzle salted caramel sauce on top (recipe for salted caramel sauce can be found here and I will recommend making it in advance)
I did not put a fillings in the cronuts, but you can if you want, it can even take it to another level :)
Hope I was able to clearly explain the preparation steps, I will also upload videos of the preparation steps on Instagram and of course, you can send me a message and ask questions.
Took quite a bit of time but the result was totally worth it!
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