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For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last few months, cronuts are a hybrid of a doughnut and a croissant created by pastry chef Dominique Ansel that have taken New York by storm. There are epic long lines to procure the deep fried delights, with some people even trading sex for said sweets.
So it's only natural that shops all over the country would capitalize on this food trend, attempting to create edible knockoffs for the masses.
Pastry chef Roxana Jullapat made an attempt over at Cook's County which we got to sample, but she decided the effort to make the fried sweets just wasn't worth it. Other bakeries didn't seem to have a problem ripping off the idea though. Sixteen of them in L.A. alone did so, in fact. (Sadly none of our ice cream purveyors have ripped off the idea of a cronut concrete a la Shake Shack. We're looking at you, Top Round.)
Betty Hallock of the L.A. Times, who also happens to have tried the original version in NYC, took it upon herself to try every single version of the hybrid donuts at each shop, some of which carried up to 6 flavors. That's quite the noble effort. One we're glad wasn't bestowed upon us, might we add. Thank you news gods.
Members of our staff have admittedly enjoyed the crullants at Semi Sweet Bakery in Downtown L.A., which made it to third place on Hallock's list. So who has the best, in her opinion? Forage. Their riff makes fun of the zeitgeisty item, naming it the "croissant doughnut #trending." And it's appropriately priced at a hipster-friendly $5.50.
Says the Times:
Forage calls its version "croissant doughnut #trending," a name made up by one of the servers, according to pastry chef Kristin Ferguson Smith. (On the receipt, it says "Crowe-Gnut.") Ferguson Smith's are nothing like Ansel's Cronut, but they are things of beauty in their own right: big, rustic, with a flakiness that's almost shaggy. Her croissant dough contains sourdough starter, which adds depth of flavor, and lately she has been making them in knot shapes (rather than traditional doughnut rings), their centers filled entirely with pastry cream and the whole thing sprinkled with cinnamon-sugar.
Now if only someone could hack Ansel's magic souflee here in L.A. That's some research we'd be down for.
