Cronuts!

My husband has a lunch at work every Christmas where they compete over who brings the best food.  We always try every year and two out of the four years we did win.  We won one of those years by bringing Cronuts.  For some reason I can't make doughnuts, but I can make cronuts.

This recipe is adapted from here. 

Ingredients:

2 1/4 tsp. yeast

1/2 cup warm water

1 tsp. fine salt

2 1/2 Tbsp. white sugar

1/2 cup milk

2 Tbsp. butter, melted and cooled

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 large egg

1/8 tsp. nutmeg

4 1/2 cups flour

12 Tbsp. butter, at room temperature, divided

Sprinkle 2 1/4 tsp. yeast over the 1/2 cup warm water.  Let stand about 10 minutes until foamy.  Add sugar, salt, milk, butter, vanilla, egg, and nutmeg.  Mix well.  Add the flour starting with 2 cups and add more as needed.  I use my stand mixer with the dough hook but you could do this by hand.  Knead for about three minutes.  It will be a slightly sticky dough.  

  Shape the dough into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap.  Place it in the fridge to relax.  Meanwhile take your butter and cut it into separate tablespoons and place between two pieces of plastic wrap about 10x 14 inches.  Roll out the butter using a rolling pin until smooth and flat.  If you can roll it into a rectangular shape about 3x6.  Its kind of difficult.  Place the plastic wrap on a sheet pan and into your freezer for about 5 minutes until hard.  

   Roll your dough into a 9x18 inch rectangle.  Place your hardened butter on the middle 1/3 of the dough.  Fold each side of the dough on top of the butter.  Wrap in plastic wrap and place in your fridge to harden again.  If you need to speed this up you can put it in your freezer.  Every 1/2 hour take your dough out of the fridge and roll out into a 9x18 rectangle and fold into thirds.  Repeat this process three times until the butter is layered through the dough.  

   Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.  Roll out dough until 3/8 inch thick.  Cut out doughnuts.  We don't have proper doughnut cutters so we use a tomato paste can that has been washed and dried.  

Lay out the dough to rise for one hour until doubled.

Then we just fry them up.  1 minute on each side until golden brown.  

 
This time for the chocolate frosting I whipped up 2 cups of cream and 1/4 cup powdered sugar and then added a box of instant chocolate pudding.  It was very yummy.  For the vanilla I just whipped up 2 Tbsp. melted butter, 1/2 tsp. vanilla, 2 tbsp. milk, and 4 cups powdered sugar.

We had fun decorating them.  I even added crushed Oreos to some.