Remember how I told you that I was in a treat making mood? Well I continued the trend that day and finally decided to try my hand at homemade cronuts. I have been obsessed with cronuts since our trip to Disneyworld (they have them in Epcot) and NYC. They were soooo good, I knew I needed to try to make them at home (since there is nowhere near here to get them!)
Many of the recipes I found just have you use crescent roll dough and fry it. Well, that is not what I was looking for. It is like the recipes that tell you to fry biscuit dough to make homemade donuts. While they are not bad, they never taste as good as homemade!
I finally found a cronut recipe from scratch. It was not a difficult recipe, just involved and takes awhile (but the time is not all at once, so it is not so bad). The cronuts turned out delicious! I did not have a donut cutter, so I just used a glass. I believe that caused the edge of the cronut to seal shut, so I didn’t get the pretty layers showing on the outside of the cronut, that I am used to seeing. However, the inside had lots of layers, just like other cronuts! I might need to buy an actual donut cutter for next time I attempt these.That is also why there is no hole cut out of the middle…
Will I be making these again? For sure. Next time, I am going to do cinnamon sugar instead of the glaze – my kids wanted the glaze, so we did that this time, but I want cinnamon sugar next time.
Ingredients:
- 3/4 cup warmed milk
- 1 tbsp dry active yeast
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 3 1/2 all-purpose flour (divided)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup of butter – room temperature
- Oil for frying
Glaze
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 tbsp milk
- or a mixture of cinnamon and sugar
Directions:
In a large bowl (or your kitchen aid bowl – if you’re like me), stir together the milk and the yeast. Let sit for about 5 minutes. Stir in the eggs, sugar, vanilla, salt and 1 cup of flour. Gradually add in another 2 1/4 cups of flour. Stir and knead the dough for several minutes until smooth and elastic (by hand or let your mixer do the work with a dough hook). Chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Beat the butter, 1 tsp of vanilla, and 1/4 cup of flour together with an electric mixer for a few minutes. Once the dough is chilled, put the dough on a lightly floured surface and roll into a 12×18″ rectangle (no need to be exact!) and about 1/4″ thick. Spread the butter over the dough. Fold the dough like you would a letter, into thirds. I actually ended up doing fourths – I am apparently bad at estimating! Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate another hour.
Put the dough back on the floured surface, roll out into a rectangle again, and once rolled out into a rectangle, fold into thirds again (see, you’re creating layers of dough, over and over). Re-cover dough and place in the refrigerator for another hour. You are going to do this roll, fold, and refrigerate dough two more times, until you have done it for a total of four times. Once you have completed the process 4 times, refrigerate for at least another hour, or overnight (I let it sit overnight).
Once the roll, fold, refrigerate process is over, roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to a 1 1/2″ thickness. Use a donut cutter (or a glass, like I did) to cut our the donuts. Place on a baking sheet until ready to fry and keep in the refrigerator to keep the butter cold.
Heat a few inches of oil to 350 (hot but not smoking) in a heavy stock pot. Cook the doughnuts in batches, being sure not to crowd the pot. Cook until golden brown on one side and then flip and cook until golden brown on the other side. Place the cooked donuts on a paper towel.
Whisk together the powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla to create a glaze. Drizzle over the donuts while still warm. If you want to do a cinnamon sugar coating, place the donuts in the cinnamon sugar mixture as soon as you take the donuts from the oil.
Eat and Enjoy!
