French pastry chef Dominique Ansel shook up the food world when he started selling the Cronut at his SoHo bakery in May 2013. Since then, demand for the croissant-doughnut hybrid has been unrelenting, inspiring numerous other Frankenpastries with equally creative names.
Bisnut
Photo by brandeating.com
Combine trendy biscuits and ever popular doughnuts and you get the bisnut. Carl’s Jr., of controversial commercial fame, started testing this biscuit and doughnut combination in Southern California stores in June.
To make the creation, a biscuit with a hole in the center is topped with icing and sprinkles. Carl’s Jr. isn’t selling the bisnut in stores across America yet, but you can easily make the treat for yourself at home. Just punch a hole in some Pillsbury’s biscuit dough and go to town.
Personally, I’m holding out for a jelly-filled version. A biscuit-doughnut hybrid filled with jelly? Yes please.
Brookie
Photo by Pillsbury
Brownies and chocolate chip cookies come together to create this fudgy treat, which existed long before Cronut. Brookies usually have a soft, chewy texture more reminiscent of brownies than of cookies. The best part about the brookie? There are no rules. Brookies come in lots of shapes and sizes: bars, cookies, muffins and Reeses-like cups. Find the pastry at any trendy coffee shop, where it might also be inexplicably known as the brookster.
Cragel
Photo by Gothamist
Brooklyn’s Bagel Store started selling the cragel, the lovechild of croissant and bagel, in September 2013. The pastry combines croissant and bagel doughs to create a chewy, flaky breakfast pastry. In October, struggling cupcake chain Crumbs Bake Shop introduced their own version of the cragel, oddly known as the baissant. Mashable tasted the baissant in October and found it to be resoundingly average. I think I’ll stick with the cragel.
Ice Cream Bagel
Photo by Melissa Hom
Although it isn’t exactly a pastry, you can’t talk about dessert mashups without mentioning chef Wylie Dufresne’s ice cream bagel. The dessert, which looks nearly identical to an ordinary everything bagel, is actually bagel-flavored ice cream. The ice cream is frozen in a savarin mold and airbrushed to look like a bagel. Dufresne starting serving the dessert in his New York restaurant, WD-50, in 2009. Unfortunately for Frankenpastry fans, the ice cream bagel is no longer available. We should really start a petition to bring it back. In the meantime, try local grocery chain Wagshal‘s ice cream-stuffed doughnut instead.
Pretzel Croissant
Photo by creamandsugar.ca
New York’s City Bakery is the creator of the pretzel croissant, a snack with a cult-like following. Pretzel and croissant doughs are twisted together to create a sweet and salty treat. Crumbs, your source for copycat pastry mashups of every variety, recently introduced a version of the hybrid called the crozel.
If you’re not interested in these pastry mashups, try the granddaddy of them all: the cronut. If you’re not in New York, fast food chain Sonic is offering croissant doughnut holes served with crème brûlée sauce. Dunkin’ Donuts and Red Robin also began selling croissant doughnuts last month. These substitutes are not quite the same, but you won’t have to get up at 6 A.M. and wait in a long line for them, either.