Food Friday ... Be warned!

Consider yourself duly warned!

This post has absolutely no business being on a diet/healthy eating blog.  But sometimes things are just too delicious to ignore.  I mean “delicious” in the sense of gossip – NOT eating.  Of course in this case you can make up your own mind.

But as I mentioned right off … consider yourself duly warned … just reading this post could subliminally add calories to your daily count.  Conduct yourself accordingly and please, do not blame me for any subsequent cravings.  Proceed with caution ...

Friday, June 7, 2013 is “National Donut Day”.  Appropriately, almost every newscast, on their ‘lighter side’ segment had the story about the newest phenomenon to hit the streets of New York – the Cronut.

What the heck is a cronut you ask?  Well, let me explain …

The cronut is a croissant-donut hybrid.  The brainchild of French chef Dominique Ansel and is served exclusively and sparingly at Dominique Ansel Bakery in Soho.  Although the actual recipe is a deeply guarded secret he does acknowledge that it has “loads and loads of butter, along with cream injected through multiple layers with a syringe-like pastry tip and a glaze on top that encircles the hole in the middle”.  Each cronut is then fried in grapeseed oil for 30 seconds.  He only fries nine at a time as this leaves the outer layers crunchy but the inner bites doughy.  Then he rolls the sides in sugar and adds dried, candied rose petals.  Apparently there will be a flavor of the month as in May he sold rose-vanilla and for June Ansel switched to lemon-maple with glaze and cream to match.

My teeth are starting to hurt!

One customer was quoted as saying, “it’s a little bit of heaven.  Definitely worth the calories.”  Chef Ansel is not giving up the calorie count on this new treat. 

I don’t even want to contemplate that number!

Only 200 to 250 are made each morning as it takes three days to complete the process of making a

cronut and the bakery sells out within an hour.  The bakery opens at 8 a.m. and the lines have started to form two hours ahead of time.  Pre-orders are allowed but you must order them at least two weeks in advance.  Reservations for orders of 100+ must be placed months ahead of time.  At this time purchases are limited to 2 per customer with a price tag of $5 per cronut. 

For those customers who sleep in and don’t make it to the bakery in time to get their cronut fix they can still pick one up off the “cronut black market” or on Craigslist where scalpers are asking up to $40.

“Cronut” is already a registered trademark but that has not stopped copycats from starting to mimic his creation.  Enter “DIY Cronuts” or “Copycat Cronuts” into a search engine and you will be sure to get all kinds of hits; “Doissants” seem to be leading the way, but there is also a knock-off using Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and an ordinary oven.

My BFF is in NYC this weekend … I really hope she does not bring me back a Cronut … sad as it is to admit – I’d eat it!