STACK ATTACK!

Resistance is futile: Ice cream-stuffed doughnuts are NYC’s new dessert craze

T ALK about wicked ’wiches.

Doughnut ice-cream sandwiches, now offered at the East Village’s Stuffed Ice Cream, are New York’s monster food mashup du jour. Obviously, millennials are to thank/blame.

The company’s origin story is best summed up as: Hey, why not?

“We had no culinary background whatsoever,” co-founder Alan Yaung says. He’s not being humble. The 24-year-old former pharmacy technician had been laboring under Duane Reade’s fluorescent lights for a year and a half when dessert destiny struck via longtime friend and former handball teammate Jackie Luu.

Luu, also 24, is no trained gourmet, either — his college degree is in finance. But he appreciates a good treat — and a good ’gram. So when he spied doughnut ice-cream sandwiches during a trip to California, he realized that New York City had a (doughnut) hole to fill.

Soon after, he reached out to Yaung with a partnership offer. The rest is high-calorie history.

It took the Brooklyn natives about a year to bring their deep-fried dream to life. The duo conducted laborious research, sampling their way through the city’s doughnuteries and tinkering in the kitchen. “We just Googled a recipe and tweaked it,” Yaung says. Their standards were less cavalier than their strategy, he says: “We know that New York has a high bar for doughnuts.”

To make their “cruffs” (from $6.50) — a Cronut-esque portmanteau, from “cream” and “stuffed” — the guys fill their glazed doughnuts with a scoop or two of housemade ice cream (try the white chocolatelavender, Thai iced tea or Rice Krispies).

Then, they place the doughnutwiches in a “top secret” machine that somehow warms the pastry without melting the ice cream. Finally, the dessert is halved and showered with toppings such as Fruity Pebbles or gemlike mochi nuggets.

While they’re no diet food, cruffs are less overwhelming than they sound: The smallish doughnuts are airy, and the ice cream isn’t too sweet. Still, if the mashup seems a bit much, you can get your sugar high a more standard way, with ice cream in a cup or cone (from $4.25) or as a milkshake ($6.50).

Whatever you order, don’t forget to snap it in front of the store’s custom-made neon cruff sign. As the kids say, “Pics or it didn’t happen.” 139 First Ave.; 917-261-4904

Stuffed’s elevated ice-cream flavors, such as black sesame, are balanced by lowbrow toppings such as Cap’n Crunch. Stuffed Ice Cream’s Rebecca Ye proffers a pair of “cruffs.”