BEFORE SWEET RAMEN THERE WAS THIS

A CRONUT IS SIMPLY A DOUGHNUT PLUS A CROISSANT. IT WAS THE RAGE NOT TOO LONG AGO. ONE OF US HAD TO TAKE A CRACK AT CONQUERING THE LAYERS OF BUTTER

Nothing says home like the smell of baking. For years, my siblings and I were welcomed in the house with the whiff of freshly baked goodies right out of our kitchen. Mum’s oven was fertile ground for the courtship of melted butter, cocoa and flour, along with a few eggs and vegetable oil. She made incredible cookies and cakes. There was no lack of creative spark in her kitchen. Recipes were meticulously noted in a decades-old diary, and when she donned the chef’s hat, she would let her creative juices flow and add subtle twists to the original recipes. Sadly, her magic creative touch didn’t rub off on me but her enthusiasm for trying new flavours and cuisines did.

So this time, when my Willy Wonka of traditional Indian gastronomy and bakery, was in town, I decided to show off my culinary skills and suggested trying our hand together at cronuts.

“Cronuts? What’s that?” asked Mum, squinting her eyes and creating multiple creases on her forehead. “Well, it’s sort of a recent invention by Dominique Ansel, a French chef in New York, who brought the best of a croissant and a doughnut together in one product — called the cronut,” I replied. “Sounds interesting, but you take the lead. I’ll be your taster,” she said. Got me worried first, but I took up the challenge.

For the record, the most complicated things I’ve ever baked in my small kitchen in Dubai is a chocolate cake and cupcakes. But all these were made with the help of the ever-trusty Betty Crocker cake mix and icing. Clearly, this self-inflicted cronut challenge was a hard graft.

It took me several attempts and the process included recurrent grocery bills with bakery items, and a number of new installations in my kitchenette to get it right. Of course, I underestimated three months and more than ten variations of cronuts that Dominique himself had to endure before coming up with the perfect cronut recipe that has since taken the world by storm, and inspired rookies like me.

At Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York SoHo, each batch of cronuts is known to take about three days to prepare. The first day is exclusively for preparing the dough; the bakers knead it to perfection and let it ferment and rest overnight. On the second day, butter is added, oodles of it, between the hundreds of layers that are prepared to make it flaky and fluffy. The dough is again allowed to rest. On the

Michael and Celicia

third day, the dough is cut with round stencils into the cronut shape and left to ferment. Once each cronut has risen enough in size, it is fried in grapeseed oil, filled with cream, rolled in sugar and finished with a glaze.

That is how the original guys do it, every day. But I was on the lookout for a simple and easy way out. One video on YouTube suggested putting yeast, warm water, sugar, melted butter, vanilla extract, egg, nutmeg, milk and flour in a stand mixer and churning the ingredients first slowly at mark 2, and then fast at mark 5. Ah, who needs a mixer, I thought. Households in India prefer kneading their dough by hand; makes it more workable and is good exercise, I was told.

Regrettably, the trick didn’t work well for me. The dough was too elastic, something the video had warned about. So I bought an expensive but nice-lookingchrome-finished-super-smart professional mixer. It worked. I had the perfect softsticky dough to start with.

I wrapped it in plastic and placed it in the fridge — supposedly for about 20 minutes, but then I lost track of time watching

House of Cards and ended up allowing it to rest for two hours. Now what? I started rolling it anyway into a rectangular block. Once done, I had to spread butter on one third of the block, fold into sheets, and spread butter again and fold. To add my signature touch, I used clarified Indian butter (ghee) to make softer cronuts. Made folds, let it rest in the refrigerator, brought it out, rolled it out again, and refrigerated again. All in all, I did this four times over.

Despite the cold, the dough had risen, and I was so proud. It was a little wobbly, and not firm as shown in the video, but that was fine, I thought. I cut the cronuts into nice round discs (bought special stencils for this one too). The round discs were then stowed away for about two hours before frying. They looked perfect! But I was too exhausted to do anything more.

The original cronuts are filled with custard and are available in numerous flavours. Since its launch in May 2013, Ansel Bakery has had a unique flavour each month. People queue everyday to get their hands on them and relish the variety. Just like Michael and Celicia, a couple in Dubai, did when they were holidaying in New York. “We waited for 40 minutes in queue in New York to try the cronuts. There was novelty to the concept and everybody was talking about it. So we said, why not?”

I met the duo in the Mall of Emirates at Common Grounds where they were enjoying coffee and cronuts (of course). “I might not queue for cronuts, because it’s not novel anymore. But I like the overabundance of caramel in it,” said Celia. “I love how super sweet and soft it is.”

Too exhausted to do anything more, I decided to serve my cronuts as they were and bought readymade ones from Common Grounds. I picked up condensed caramel, raspberry and pistachio ones.

The idea was to showcase my newfound baking experience to Mum and friends but, as it turned out, it was more like a platform for cronut discovery. My experiments didn’t hold that well, and tasted more like a half-fried puffed bread with oodles of ghee. But the readymade batch was simply delectable. My Mum and guests dug into the sugary shell, and enjoyed every bite of the new craze, making cronuts truly the showstoppers in my little soirée.

We waited 40 minutes in queue in New York to try the cronuts at Ansel Bakery. There was a novelty to the concept. Everyone was talking about it.