It's a marriage made in sugar heaven! The genius bakers over at Dominique Ansel Bakery have combined donut and croissant into a new culinary creation. Behold, the cronut (or if you want to appear more sophisticated, cwaahh-nut):
Each one of these puppies is made from pastry dough that's been sheeted, laminated, proofed, then fried like a doughnut and rolled in flavored sugar. But that's not all: Cronuts-to-be are also filled with a not-so-sweet Tahitian vanilla cream, given a fresh coat of rose glaze, and bedazzled with rose sugar. Got it? Good. Let's briefly examine the sheer implausibility and engineering genius that goes into each one of these things.
First off, call your friendly neighborhood pastry chef and ask him or her what happens when you try to fry croissant dough. It's not pretty. Even if the laminated layers don't separate instantly and part ways in the hot oil six ways to Sunday, chances are that yeast-leavened dough will have a lumpy, sad, and uneven ascent before it ever gets to the golden brown stage. Ansel says it took around ten recipes and adjustments to multiple variables of time and temperature before he found a special trick to sheeting the dough, then learning to fry it in grapeseed oil at one specific (and somewhat secret) temperature.
Hugh Merwin of Grub Street New York has more on this new culinary marvel: Link
NEW FOOD TREND ALERT!