Salted Chocolate Cronut Recipe

Of all of the food portmanteaus — brookies, totchos, turducken, and their ilk — one of our favorites is the cronut, because how delicious are the two iconic foods whose names are mashed up here? As recipe developer Tanika Douglas tells us about her salted chocolate cronuts, "I absolutely adore this recipe because it's the perfect cross between two of my favorite things: donuts and croissants." There are also multiple flavors at play here, including a slightly salty chocolate ganache filling and a cinnamon sugar-sprinkled exterior amid the buttery layers of pastry.

Douglas acknowledges that this cronut recipe takes quite a bit of time, and "a layered pastry dough like this can be intimidating." Still, she calls the process a relativity straightforward one and assures us that "the end result is incredibly worthwhile." Her best advice? Read through the entire recipe before plunging right in, and once you unveil your accomplishment, you'll be pleased with the results and proud of yourself for putting this particular notch in your dessert belt.

Though this recipe requires a fair number of ingredients, none of them should be too hard to source. The chocolate ganache is made with heavy cream, dark chocolate, and salt, while the cronut dough is made with milk, yeast, fine sugar (also known as caster sugar, a type of finely ground sugar you can make by whizzing up regular sugar in the food processor), vanilla, an egg white, melted butter, and flour. You're also going to need more softened butter as you shape the cronuts, oil for frying, and cinnamon and granulated sugar to sprinkle on top.

To make the chocolate ganache, bring the cream to a simmer over medium heat. Break up 7 ounces of the chocolate, then pour the cream over the bits and add ½ teaspoon of salt. Let the mixture sit for a minute or so to soften up the chocolate, then stir it up until it's nice and smooth. You have now achieved ganache! It needs to solidify a bit before it's firm enough to stuff the cronuts, though, so stick it in the fridge for an hour.

Now it's time to put your stand mixer to work. You'll start the cronut dough by warming the water and milk, then adding the yeast and 1 teaspoon of fine sugar. After about 5 minutes, it should be foamy, so add the bowl to your stand mixer and whiz up the vanilla, egg white, 3 tablespoons of melted butter, and the rest of the fine sugar and salt. Stir in the flour, then knead the mixture with the hook attachment until it looks dough-like. Take the dough out of the bowl and knead it 3 times on a floured surface, then put it into a greased bowl covered with plastic wrap and refrigerate it.

After 20 minutes, roll out the chilled dough into a ¼-inch thick rectangle, then spread half of the softened butter over the middle third. Take one of the unbuttered sides and fold it over the butter, then spread the rest of the butter over this section, and fold the remaining unbuttered piece over the top. Cover the dough with a piece of plastic wrap and return it to the refrigerator for an hour. Repeat the rolling and folding process (but not the buttering), then refrigerate it for 30 minutes. Do these steps twice more so you've rolled, folded, and refrigerated 4 times in all. 

Allowing the butter to chill several times, while labor-intensive, is what creates those distinctive croissant-like layers. "I would recommend making these cronuts on the weekend, when you have time to relax and enjoy the process," Douglas says.

Roll the cronut dough out until it's ¾-inch thick, then cut it out into rounds using a cookie cutter or another round object. You'll then need to make the round holes in the middle (the "onut" part) using a smaller cutter. Once you've cut the cronuts, place them on a parchment-lined sheet tray, cover them with a towel, and let them rise, unrefrigerated, for about an hour. After this time, they should be almost double in size.

You may now heat up a pot half-filled with cooking oil until it reaches a temperature of 350 F. Add a few cronuts to the hot oil, being careful not to crowd them, and fry them for 2 minutes on each side. As each batch finishes, let it drain on paper towels.

Stir the cinnamon into the granulated sugar, then toss the still-warm cronuts with the mixture, making sure to coat each one as much as possible. Now take the ganache out of the refrigerator and stuff it into a piping bag or a plastic bag with one of the corners cut off. Squirt some ganache into each quarter of a cronut to fill it, then repeat with the remaining cronuts.

As a final touch, melt the remaining chocolate in the microwave in 15-second bursts. Stir it until it is smooth, then drizzle it over the cronuts. They are now ready to eat! Douglas does say these treats are best enjoyed on the same day they are made, but if you can't manage to serve all 16 at once, you can keep them in the fridge for a few days in an airtight container or for a few weeks in the freezer. If you opt for the latter storage method, Douglas recommends that you thaw the cronuts before warming them up in the oven.