Cook with Arthy shama: Kronut - Baking partners challenge

What is a Kronut? Kronut is an hybird version, combining goodness of Croissant & Doughnut. Though they look very much like doughnut, they are crisp and flaky unlike latter. This is because of incorporating butter into prepared dough, resembling puff pastry process. Also Kronuts are blessed with an pastry cream filling which makes them soo special and unique than normal doughnuts.

Actually they are called Cronuts (ie Cro from Croissant and Nuts from doughnut). Since the founder has trademarked the name, it is unusual to use the original name. Mr. Dominique Ansel is that proud founder and it is said that people thrive in lines before his bakery to get an sweet munch of this kronut. When Swathi Iyer announced the challenge, I was scared because of my previous disastrous attempts with puff pastry making at home. However she was kind enough to provide me tips. With no perfect videos, I just went on with suggested recipe step-by-step. And yes, got an awesome result. So, thanks to Swathi and Reeni for suggesting this godly recipe.

As the procedure for making kronuts as an whole was complex, I went on with an simpler glaze and simple filling. I made strawberry filling and icing sugar glaze. One drawback with these Kronuts is that they have an very short shelf-life. So better to finish them early :) :)

This procedure is done in three days
First day knead the dough
Second day, prepare pastry dough by incorporating butter.
Third day fry the doughnut

This recipe yields 8 Kronuts
Source is from BootLeg Cronut

Ingredients required

For making dough

2 cups all purpose flour/maida
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup + 1 tbspn powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk
31/2 tsp active dry yeast
2 large eggs
2 tbspn unsalted butter

For pastry

3/4 cup unsalted butter

For strawberry cream filling

4 tbspn unsalted butter
8 tbspn icing sugar
1 tsp strawberry essence
Pinch of red orange colour

For glaze

1/2 cup icing sugar
2 tbspn of milk
1 tsp vanilla essence

Other

Oil (for deep-frying)
Powdered sugar (for rolling kronuts)
Parchment papers, few
Extra flour, for dusting

Method

DAY I

Start by preparing the dough, mix flour with salt and sugar, keep aside. Heat milk along with butter and simmer till it dissolves, keep aside. Add yeast to lukewarm water, keep aside. Beat the eggs, keep aside. Now, we are going to combine all ingredients ie flour-sugar, milk-butter, yeast, egg and knead till we get firm dough.

Wrap them up in plastic and keep aside for atleast one hour till it doubles in size. Refrigerate it overnight.

DAY II

Next day, remove them thirty minutes ahead. Start preparing butter layer for pastry dough. Add finely chopped pieces of butter on parchment paper. Keep another parchment paper over it and lightly roll on all sides, till they smudge together. Now remove the topmost paper and you can adjust the shape to an neat looking square. Refrigerate them immediately or atleast for an hour so that they are firm and dont turn messy.

To the prepared dough, start rolling them over floured surface, till they resemble ten-inch square roughly. Place the five-inch butter layer over them. As the pic follows, fold one side of dough towards butter and do so anti-clockwise till you get an folded parcel of dough-butter

To this parcel, roll them with help of an pin to an rectangle that is 20 * 10 inch. After doing so, fold right side of the dough towards the centre. Repeat with other side, so that it now resembles a book to be opened. Refrigerate them at once. Traditionally, they were rolled over an tiles which was refrigerated in order to provide cooling effect. Here I refrigerated the rolling pin and extra flour used for dusting to provide the same. Kindly go through this link for more precise details.

After an hour, remove the dough and repeat the abovesaid four steps, refrigerate. Repeat this four-stepped-process for atleast four times. (Sorry, no pics for repetitive procedure)

DAY III

Next day, when you roll out the dough for the fifth time, the kronut is ready for frying.

Here for doughnut size, I used 31/2 inch and 11/2 inch caps as prescribed in source recipe.

Make an fine cut over the dough and place the doughnuts for the size proofing. Once their size doubles, refrigerate them for an hour. Start preparing your glaze and filling

For glaze, just mix icing sugar, milk and essence, leave aside.

For filling, cream up butter and sugar. Add in essence and colour, beat well and refrigerate for few minutes.

Alternatively heat oil in broad pan/kadaai and deep-fry kronuts on simmer flame. You can test the oil by sprinkling flour, if it foams up, kronuts are ready to get fried.