When visiting America, one of the items on my ‘must-eat’ list was the wonderfully strange hybrid pastry that has been taking America by storm. That’s right, I wanted a cronut! Now there was a slight issue with this – I was visiting the west coast and Phoenix, whereas the original trademarked pastry is from New York, the creation of the renowned chef Dominique Ansel. However, small details right?
So anyway, I got to Phoenix, and we were planning out our cupcake tasting challenge (more on that to come!), and wondered if there was anywhere that did the elusive cronut. So being a modern person, I turned to the Internet, asking on twitter if anyone could recommend a location. Lo and behold, I got two suggestions, and one in a good location! Sold!
The next morning we piled into the car to head over to the Victorian Cake Company and Candyland Cupcakes for a cronut breakfast. Despite the suggestion that as we could get them at Dunkin’ Donuts (which was closer to home) we persevered, and arrived, preparing to queue up for the elusive cronut! However, excitingly, there was no queue! Less excitingly, this was because it was not open yet… However the owners were lovely, and let us come in, order our cronuts and get them hot out of the oven!
The cronut itself was less a combination of the two pastries, and more a completely different cake. a round pastry, consisting of layers of a fried pastry. The croissant influence was evident in the buttery taste, though the doughnut element was harder to identify – possibly the fried element of the pastry? The pastry was then halved and filled with a flavoured cream, and a small amount of icing was added on top. The bakery made three flavours so naturally we sampled all three! The flavours were (from the top) strawberry champagne, french vanilla and cookies and cream. We were pleasantly surprised by the whole concept – it was far less greasy that predicted, and the creme patisserie filling was a great contrast to the fried layers of flaky pastry. Or favourite by far, was the French vanilla cronut, which had a really beautiful fragrant vanilla flavour – I could have eaten the cream with a spoon!
Overall conclusion – very good! I can’t honestly say that I would be one of the people who queues up every morning to buy a cronut (they are just so rich!), but as an occassional treat – and in this case holiday breakfast! – they were completely delicious. If you are in the vicinity of Phoenix, The Victorian Cake Company is worth a visit juts for these lovely things!
