Cheat's cronuts
The cronut is the newest food craze to make its way over from New York. It's a mix between a croissant and a doughnut, and chef Aaron Craze is here to show us how easy it is to make two varieties: a salted caramel with chocolate glaze and toasted nuts, and a lemon custard filling with a zesty lemon glaze.
Makes: 6Prep time: 20 minutesCooking time: 4 minutes per batch
Ingredients
500g pre-made croissant dough500ml Vegetable or sunflower oil
For the salted caramel filling
half a 397g tin of caramel (dulce de leche)a pinch of flaked sea salt (to your own taste)
For the chocolate glaze
225g dark chocolate broken into pieces125ml double creamToasted hazelnuts and peanuts , roughly chopped to sprinkle on top
For the lemon custard
4 medium free-range egg yolks½ tsp vanilla extract50g caster sugar30g cornflour300ml whole milk3 tbsp lemon curdFor the lemon glaze100g icing sugar1 tbsp fresh lemon juiceLemon zest for decoration
Method
First make your fillings and glazes. For the salted caramel filling simply stir a pinch of flaked sea salt into the caramel, start slow so as not to add to much salt. For the chocolate glaze gently melt the broken chocolate with the cream, making sure to mix well, leave this off the heat to cool slightly
To make the lemon ‘cheats cronut’ whisk the egg yolks with the sugar, vanilla extract and corn flour until all the sugar is dissolved. Heat the milk over a medium heat until small bubbles appear at the edge of the pan, pour half the hot milk into the egg mixture and quickly whisk until it’s all well incorporated. Return the mixture to the pan of milk and cook on a gentle heat to thicken the custard (it’s very important to keep stirring the mixture so lumps don’t form). Once it nice and thick, remove it from the heat and transfer to a bowl to cool it down, once cool mix it with the lemon curd
For the glaze combine the icing sugar and lemon juice in a bowl until disolved
Take the pre-made dough base and fold it in half so that it is 2cm thick. use a 9cm ring cutter, cut out 6 doughnuts and then using a 1.5cm cutter, cut out the hole in the middle
Heat a few centimetres of vegetable oil to 170C (use a deep fat fryer if you have it). Test the oil using one of the ‘cheats cronut’ holes to make sure the oil is sizzling. Cook the ‘cheats cronuts’ for 2 minutes before turning in the oil, once cooked the ‘cheats cronuts’ should be puffed up and golden brown
Once cooked remove them from the oil with a metal slotted spoon onto a plate lined with absorbent kitchen paper to cool for a few minutes until they are no longer hot to the touch
Using a 2 plastic syringes, fill one with the cooled custard mixture and inject it in the side of 3 of the ‘cheats cronut’ at 4 equally spaced points and do the same with the salted caramel
Once they have all been filled, dip one flat side of the caramel filled ones on the chocolate and rest them on a wire rack chocolate side up then sprinkle with the chopped nuts. Dip the lemon filled ones with the lemon icing in the same way and decorate with lemon zest once on the wire rack
Serve immediately