I spend too much money on food and wine, so who am I to judge, but cronut-mania is nuts:
Simply enough, “it’s part croissant and part doughnut,” explains Hugh Merwin at Grub Street. But the process of making one isn’t. It is extremely difficult to take croissant pastry dough and fry it like a doughnut. To master the “sheer implausibility and engineering genius that goes into each one of these things,” says Merwin, Ansel tried about ten different recipes and learned to fry his creation in grapeseed oil at an undisclosed temperature. The cronut originally premiered in rose-vanilla, complete with Tahitian vanilla cream and rose sugar. However, at the start of June, Ansel switched the flavor to lemon maple to be “zesty” and “lighter.”
[….]There’s a second route for getting a cronut, but it’s a little shady. As with many precious items in short supply, cronuts can be purchased on the black market for up to eight times their in-shop value. As The Huffington Post reports, often the first people in line have no intention of eating the pastry confection. The $5 cronuts sell on Craigslist for up to $40. Cronut scalpers (yes, they’re really called that) Joe and Danny Bird are able to make up to $120 a day.
Omnes Omnibus
This is a hoax, yes?
Brandon
Why don’t they just increase the price?
BGinCHI
I thought a Cro-nut was a congressman from Oklahoma.
No?
Jerzy Russian
Jesus Hussein Christ. Talk about first-world problems.
David Fud
Considering that a croissant is half butter and half flour, they might as well just melt a stick of butter and some lard, add sugar and drink it. I am amazed by the ability of people to create ever more unhealthy things to put in our pie holes.
ETA: reminds me of this from last years’ political freakshow in our favorite corn-subsidy state: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/15/dining/at-the-iowa-state-fair-deep-fried-butter-on-a-stick.html?_r=0
kbuttle
@David Fud: What, you’ve never been to the Minnesota State Fair?
Wag
@David Fud:
But at least the final frying takes place in healthy grape seed oil, instead of lard.
p.a.
Not The Onion?
Mr Stagger Lee
AMC announces, a new spin-off from Breaking Bad, Walter White Jr unable to pay for his college expenses goes to the dark side as a cronut baker and dealer. Watch the dark world of the cronut, in Breaking Bad 2 the Cronuttia, with Jessie Pinkman, Saul Goodma, Hank and Betsy Schrader, yes the long suffering Skyler White. And in a new twist Gustavo Fring revived from the dead as the distributor of the cronuts in battle with the Mexican Cartel(Yeah we will bring back Danny Trejo’s head on a tortoise :-D )
PurpleGirl
I don’t think I’m rushing down to SoHo to try one. Stand in line for 2 hours before the store even opens… no thank you. I’ll stay in bed and later get a bagel and coffee for breakfast. They don’t sound that enticing.
Comrade Mary
1) Cut Milky Way [aka Mars Bar] into one inch chunks.
2) Put chunks into appropriate deep fry batter.
3) Deep fry!
.
.
.
7) PROFIT!
aimai
@Mr Stagger Lee: I think you are on to something.
This is all part of what I call “The Fajittafication” of America, this tendency to combine things–the blueberry bagel, the salty bacon topped pecan sticky bun (actually, this is really good), the croissandwhich, the “kung pao fajitta” which originally started me on this rant. Sometimes its just so obvious and brilliant that you can’t get enough of it (Korean pork belly tacos sound wonderful, to me) and sometimes you just want to gag. I suppose its like religious syncretism–one man’s new take on religion is another man’s blasphemy.
Still, this sounds like nothing much more than another UFO–unidentified frying object–which people have been turning out in various forms: fritters, beigneits, bunuelos, donughts (cake and not cake), etc..etc..etc…If something is hot enough and fresh enough, its usually good. Five minutes later? Not worth it.
Joel
Christ, New Yorkers piss me off some times.
Todd
FTFY, Gawker-style.
By the way, the fake phishing link is completely made up. I don’t know if it leads to anything, but am unwilling to try.
kdaug
Widening gyres and waistbands.
Mere cronuts are loosed upon the world.
The frost-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
… (Again: …)
Behold my works, ye donuts, and despair.
Amen.
Schlemizel
I love food, I even obsess or it sometimes but there is nothing I can’t live without & way over-priced trendy bullshit is #1 on my list of things to avoid. They are never worth it even when they are very good. Those hip places that make you wait 2 hours to get a table? Yeah, never eat there because they are 90% about the experience.
Suffern ACE
I have no desire to eat one of these.
Does it happen to have a jelly filled version?
jibeaux
Eat the croissant AND the donut and save yourself about $36.50, if not the calories, no?
RSA
Engineering genius is building a spaceship or a skyscraper or a nano-robot. Not standing over a deep fryer with ten different dough recipes in hand.
MomSense
Around the corner from my office is a little donut shop where they make old fashioned, raised donuts. They sell out by 11:00 am or so every day. I can’t even tell you what the smell of those donuts is like–makes you feel hungry all day long. Fortunately I am too busy to go over there.
I haven’t tried a cronut but I do love a well executed simple croissant or pain au chocolat. I avoid those as well!
PurpleGirl
@Joel: It wouldn’t surprise if most of the people buying these things aren’t native New Yorkers but transplant foodies and hipsters looking for a new trendy thing.
jibeaux
Of course, NYC is also where you can pay a lady dressed in white to bring a spray bottle of water to your apartment and purify it of its bad vibes for a three to four digit sum, so you know. More money than sense.
MomSense
@BGinCHI:
WIN!!
jibeaux
@aimai: it does rather lack the genius of banh mi. And both fresh donuts and croissants are excellent on their own terms. No need to try to frankenstein them into something too buttery to be a donut and too sweet to be a croissant.
cmorenc
@Comrade Mary:
Deep-fried candy bars (particularly Milky Way) have been sold at State Fairs for several years now. At the annual North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh, there’s several food vendor booths which specialize in fried candy bars.
The NEWEST innovation are donut-burgers, in which a sugar-glazed donut serves as the bun for a hamburger or cheeseburger. (The donut is freshly fried on-site at the vendor’s booth along with the hamburger.) And even that’s not so new, been around for a couple of years at least.
schrodinger's cat
Does not sound appetizing. At all.
Jay
“Tremendous cream”
Fck a dollar and a dream
Still tote Gats strapped with infrared beams.
The Notorious D-O-U-G, everybody!
Ultraviolet Thunder
Not gonna eat that. I just had a perfectly acceptable Starbucks croissant here in the hotel breakfast room in southern Mexico.
My colleagues are obsessed with Authentic food when we travel. No, thanks. I’m fine with the gut microorganisms I have. No street tacos or currywurst for me.
As for this Cronut, if it’s notbbeing knocked off in shopping mall food courts across the land in 18 months I’ll be disappointed.
NonyNony
@aimai:
But this kind of ethnic fusion of cuisine is what America is all about! Chicken-fried steak, hamburgers, hot dogs, American-style pizza, American-style “Chinese food”, “TexMex” food in general. And by American I don’t just mean the USA either – hell even authentic Mexican cooking wouldn’t exist without it, since it’s a fusion of European Spanish dishes and techniques and Native American dishes and techniques.
Sure sometimes down the road to finding the next “kim chi pork tacos” (which are an OUTSTANDING food) you might run across an experiment with a “General Tso’s Burrito” (which, let me tell you, was even more terrible than it sounds). But that’s just the experimental process at work, and it’s one of the things that I really love about living in this country.
(Now this should be distinguished from the equally American food experiments of “just how bad for us can we make this food” which leads to things like breakfast sandwiches that use donuts as buns or the desire to use bacon fat for everything just because or deep frying everything whether it’s a good idea or not. A lot of state fair food seems to come from this impulse for some reason…)
Todd
@cmorenc:
I’ve seen them, but won’t wade into that pond. As much as I love burgers and as much as I love donuts, that is just plain disgusting – some flavors just aren’t made to go together.
Glidwrith
@Comrade Mary:you laugh, but the San Diego County Fair is famous for stuff like this, only it is the entire bar. You can also make a fortune because of the number of people that come to the fair.
aimai
@jibeaux: Banh Mi! I’ve been dreaming about one of those today for some reason. They make a killer version near me. Now you’ve done it and I’ll have to go out and get one for lunch.
Comrade Dread
If you can afford to pay $40 for a cronut, your taxes need to be raised.
NotMax
Not in any way, shape or form a morning person, so only very, very rarely make it to the nearby Komoda Bakery (family run since 1916) to get ultra-fresh handmade stick donuts or cream puffs, which quickly sell out by mid-morning (if not even before then).
JCT
@PurpleGirl: crazy – just treat yourself to a DKA, the bakery itself is stellar.
aimai
@NonyNony: Actually one of the 8th grade boys in my daughter’s class, adorably focused on doing a project on ethnicity, immigration, and food explored this issue in terms of how different foods reflect different food metaphors on immigration (“melting pot” “tossed salad” “stew” “soup” –he didn’t say “Heinz 57” but that would have been a good metaphor too). At any rate he invented and discarded some pretty horrible sounding dishes and invented and cooked for the class a mexican-american-chinese pork peking dumpling filled with ropa vieja. It was quite good.
NotMax
cmorenc
It’s a Luther Burger (named after Luther Vandross), and has been around since 1979.
Comrade Mary
Duuuuuudes: deep fried chocolate bars weren’t invented at American county fairs. They are a Scottish thing. Note that Mars Bars / Milky Ways reference I made.
Also: deep fried pizza. Now available in America.
NotMax
@Comrade Mary
Almost makes one’s heart seize up just looking at it:
Deep-fried mayonnaise
Tokyokie
@Comrade Mary: Obviously you’ve never visited the State Fair of Texas, where every year vendors compete for the honor of weirdest thing to serve fried. They were doing all sorts of candy bars like a decade ago. I tried the fried Coke one year. It was dreadful; just some batter that substituted soda pop for water. A couple of times since, the spousal unit has tried whatever fried delicacy was new, only to throw half of it away (even though she was sharing with a friend).
That being said, frying a croissant like a doughnut sounds intriguing, only because I’ve made croissants from scratch before, and they’re pretty difficult to master. (OK, so I didn’t make things easy for myself by deciding to make strawberry jam from scratch to go inside them as well.) As I recall, the buttery dough is very delicate, and I don’t know how one would fry the darn things.
Much less why one would want to.
(And I got the Mars Bar reference, which is why I figured you never visited Big Tex before he burned up. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Big_Tex_fire.2_retouched.jpg/220px-Big_Tex_fire.2_retouched.jpg )
scav
Wasn’t last year the Kobe burger thing? Next up, they’ll combine the Cronut as a bun to same and preen on their edgy hip deconstruction of state-fair Americana. Pet Rocks are judged by their brilliance, facetting, clarity and carets for some.
Butch
@cmorenc: You beat me to it. If you attend the Upper Peninsula State Fair in Escanaba, you can get deep fried Snickers, Oreos, some other things I’m forgetting, and yes, chocolate-covered cheesecake served with hot fudge sauce.
RSR
>> It is extremely difficult to take croissant pastry dough and fry it like a doughnut.
Sounds like a job for America’s Test Kitchen.
aimai
@Tokyokie: I don’t know why you’d want to deep fry a croissant–the layers are the thing and they are already dripping in butter, if done right,and quite crisp. You would probably get the same effect buttering and deep frying fillo dough with a lot less work.
scav
@Tokyokie: Looks like Scotland is still in the running legitimately though. This article gets theirs back 20 years in 2004. Mars disowns the deep-fried Mars bar
“Attempt to secure EU-protected status for batter-covered Scottish delicacy abandoned as Mars refuses to support it”
Poopyman
$40 for a funnel cake? I’ll pass.
Tokyokie
@aimai: That’s what I’m thinking as well. You’d need to fry the dough at a hot enough temperature for a short time to retain the buttery texture, but that’s probably insufficient time for the dough to rise. And yes, frying filo dough would get you to the same place with a lot less work. Which still leaves the question of why you’d want to.
@scav: Well, I wouldn’t expect the State Fair of Texas to be original, just loud. It’s just that weird fried stuff seems to have become a badge of honor for the fair, never mind that it’s all pretty awful. At least at the Spamorama down in Austin, the recipes are all jokes (Spam daiquiries, anyone?), even though they all prominently feature Spam.
kdaug
@Tokyokie: Once, when I was a kid, I traveled with Mr. Tex’s pants strapped to the back of a convertible. (The pants, not me. I was riding in the back.)
It was weirder than it sounds. But it’s not often you get to duck under pants, so there’s that. I’d call it “formative”, except I hadn’t thought about it in ~40 years until you brought it up.
Weirdest deep-fried thing I’ve eaten was rattlesnake, but that was delicious and in the Boy Scouts, so Big Tex gets a pass.
SiubhanDuinne
If you never hear from me again, it’s because my arteries have slammed shut just reading this thread. Deep-fried buttered lard with a cholesterol glaze, and a side of goose fat.
Punchy
People buy random food on Craigslist? And easy-to-go-stale pastries? Who the fuck are these morans?
jeffreyw
@SiubhanDuinne: And even better with bacon!
Trinity
Wait…what?
RSR
Sometimes I think items like this are designed just as gimmicks–delicious gimmicks–but still unnecessary. But other times, necessity is the mother of gimmicky-sounding inventions.
A new-ish restaurant here in Philly–an outdoor summer joint on the river (meaning they have about five months each year to make their nut, and are subject to the vagaries of the weather)–unveiled a sous vide cooked, liquid nitrogen frozen, deep fryer finished cheeseburger. Sure, it sounds gimmicky, but it allows them to turn out plenty of consistent, high quality, fully cooked (read: safe) but still pink in the center burgers in record time. I’m sure it also allows them to stockpile a large number of frozen units for large crowds, without the risks of running out, or having too much fresh meat on hand and having it go bad. (A couple rainy days in a row, and they could have too much on hand.)
http://blog.zagat.com/2013/04/morgans-pier-sneak-preview-burger-ice.html
Tokyokie
@kdaug: Is that how the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series got its start?
muddy
@aimai: What would be easier still would be to buy a croissant and cut it with a circular cookie cutter. Roll it about in a hot pan, re-crisping the edges. I guess a propane torch would be excessive.
Violet
Just the name–cronut–sounds unappetizing. Should have gone with doissant. And I just googled it and there’s already some dumb kind of cronut v doissant thing–NYC v D.C.: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/06/dc-doissant-cronut/65868/
donnah
@David Fud:
Haha! Reminds me of a newspaper article about the presidential candidates eating corn dogs in Iowa. The newspaper headline crowed about candidates tasting the “local delicacy” at the fair.
One commenter at Wonkette wrote: “A fucking corndog is a local delicacy? Jesus fucking Christ, Iowa.”
ChrisNYC
It doesn’t strike me as American at all, tho I can see the similarities. It’s so French — ridiculously ornate, takes three days to make, the guy who sells them is French and spent 8 months figuring out how to do it. He warns (warns!) against trying to make them yourself because (and imagine this with a proper French sneer) “it will probably turn out horrible.” It’s hilarious.
the Conster
Nothing could be better than the almond croissants from PB Boulangerie in Wellfleet. It’s not possible.
ruemara
@jibeaux: I can do that for myself.
I got no interest in cronuts. Making a decent donut is hard enough and so many can’t. Why should I eat another monstrous creation that fails? Plus, that’s far too much exercise and deprivation for 1 bit of a snack. We need to stop creating crap like this, there’s already a lot of overdone desserts out there.
gbear
Has anyone mentioned that today is national donut day? I got this info from a bakery that I like on Facebook.
I’ve already had two.
joes527
@jibeaux: Ah. The power of New Yorkers to other everyone who isn’t themselves.
And yes, I just othered, New Yorkers, but I did it from the west coast, so the othering comes with organic yogurt and granola.
schrodinger's cat
From the thread below, where I posted this comment by mistake.
If you want to eat sweetened fried dough, jalebis can be quite good, especially if they are piping hot.
ChrisNYC
@Comrade Mary: I always thought that too. It gets mentioned at least once a day in the Guardian.
RSA
@aimai:
There’s a Vietnamese restaurant within walking distance of my office, and they make great roasted pork bahn mi. Hmm… Hungry…
joes527
This post reminds me. The fair’s in town! I wonder how they are going to top deep fried butter this year.
Poopyman
@gbear: Mmmmmm!
Felanius Kootea
Fuck a dollar and a dream…
The UK Guardian had an article up yesterday on how to make a cronut, so this craze is going international. Not my cup of tea, I’m more of a Peking-duck-tacos kind of gal. They’re amazing.
schrodinger's cat
@jeffreyw: How is Katie?
Food thread needs a fat orange kitteh for more goodness and not just any kitteh, a kitteh mews to great artists.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@RSA:
And here I am packing up to head at least 100 miles from the nearest source of banh mi. Y’all are mean.
ericblair
@ChrisNYC:
Eet weel probablement turn out ‘orrible.
Amir Khalid
@scav:
Who could have known the Mars bars people had a commitment to promoting healthy, active lifestyles?
Higgs Boson's Mate
Hmmm, if you eat a $40 cronut does your shit still stink?
aimai
@muddy: “I guess a propane torch would be excessive?” I don’t understand the language you are using.
How about toasting it over sterno and calling it a “hobo feast!” We can probably sell tickets on craigslist for 40 dollars a pop.
PsiFighter37
Planning on making the pilgrimage to SoHo this weekend or next. It sounds phenomenally tasty.
aimai
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Here’s how to do it–I won’t say it won’t be ugly, but it will probably work:
White bread
Liverwurst
Cilantro
Jalapeno
Mayo
Lime Juice
If that doesn’t taste good just deep fry it. That’ll do the trick.
Keith
Oh, good grief. You have to fry dough at at least 350-375, and grapeseed smokes at 485, so trial and error in 25 degree increments. And due to the butter content of croissant dough, it’s likely chilled first. Not..a..big…deal.
maus
@Omnes Omnibus: There is zero chance that the pastry black market is not a hoax.
Jamey
Is it wrong for me to secretly wish that Cro-Nuts cause cancer? Like, instantly. This would be a plague that strikes only the wicked, right?
Jamey
Is it wrong for me to secretly wish that Cro-Nuts cause cancer? Like, instantly. This would be a plague that strikes only the wicked, right?
aimai
@the Conster: Oh.My.God–its true. [but you know what? The almond croissants at the tiny Blue Willow next door are almost just as good.]
Higgs Boson's Mate
@aimai:
Oh, wow. I think I’ll stick with Rice Crispies and mayonnaise.
the Conster
@aimai:
I’ve heard that from a couple of other people so when the line is too long at PB (which is all the time, but…), it’s good to know. Hard to believe, but good to know.
Epicurus
A fool and His money, anyone? This is such a “New York” thing, too; everybody has to jump on the latest trend from the Times’ Style section, or the latest bo-ho Williamsburg bar/restaurant. It’s really too inconsequential to pay attention to, but then, there’s not a lot of “real news” out there. Panem et circenses…and the beat goes on.
different-church-lady
Ah yes: stunt food. Upper middle class conspicuous consumption is not dead.
muddy
@aimai: We could go multi-media and do a raku firing at the same time! I’m sure the metal vapors would not hurt the cronuts, they have a protective layer of fat.
dww44
@MomSense: Years ago, while in high school, we learned to make raised doughnuts in our home ec class. I remember the wonderful smell to this very day. My sister and I made them at home a few times. Neither of us needed the calories then or now, but they were wonderful.
Villago Delenda Est
There are a lot of people out there who have more money than they need.
They should give it to me. I’ll put it to more productive use than adding fat cells to their abdomens.
dr. luba
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Actually, street food can be quite safe, often safer than the buffets at 4 star restaurants. The secret is to eat food that is hot, and cooked in front of you if possible.
And never, ever eat from a salad bar in a third world (or whatever we’re calling it now) country. This is based on experience in the field and a slew of travel medicine courses.
(You have been immunized for Hepatitis A, of course?)
JoyfulA
@dww44: As a kid, I used to sit around the kitchen while my grandmother made doughnuts. A broom was an important part of the process—for storage while they cooled off.
I have the recipe around somewhere, but it’s a lot of work, and I don’t like to cook.
KS in MA
@kdaug: Fabulous!
Bill Arnold
@cmorenc:
I thought donut-burgers were invented by Paula Deen but there is some dispute about this.
Some history.