By now I'm sure you've all heard of the Cronut -- the half croissant, half doughnut created by Chef Dominique Ansel for his bakery in New York City. In the two months since it launched it's become a worldwide phenomenon, with people waiting in line for hours just to try one.
Since then, tons of copy-cat recipes have popped up, but the problem I've noticed is that everyone seems to be way too concerned with re-creating the Cronut exactly as Dominique Ansel makes his. I on the other hand prefer Long John doughnuts above all others, and thus the Crong John was born!
Although its creator states that the Cronut is more complex than just fried croissant dough, without knowing his proprietary recipe the easiest way to make your own seems to be to use layered crescent roll dough.
Each can of crescent rolls contains eight triangles of dough, which is enough to make one Crong John. What you want to do is use two dough triangles per layer -- so you end up with a rectangle -- and then stack the four layers of dough on top of one another.
When stacking your layers you'll also want to make sure your dough is sticking together, because you don't want it separating when you deep fry it, but you also need to make sure you don't pat it down too much, because if you do it won't end up as airy when it's finished.
The next step is to cut your dough into more of a rectangular shape. I cut mine to be about one and a half inches wide and six inches long. The dough will expand a decent amount when you fry it and my finished Crong John ended up a bit larger than a traditional Long John, but with how delicious it was I was totally cool with that. Once you've got your dough cut you just need to drop it in some 375° oil until it turns golden brown, which for me was about a minute on each side.
Now, while most people might have been content with a simple vanilla frosting on their Crong John I was not, which is why I combined 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, 2 1/2 tsp. milk, 2 tsp. maple syrup, 1 tsp. cinnamon and 1/2 tsp. maple extract to create a maple glaze. Oh, and then I added some maplewood smoked bacon just to finish things off....
After trying a doughnut made out of crescent roll dough, I seriously never want to eat a regular doughnut ever again. It's insane how ridiculously light and fluffy these are. The only thing that stopped me from eating more than two of them was the fact that I ran out of dough. Even then, I contemplated heading back to the grocery store in the pouring rain to buy more, but sadly they were already closed for the night.