October 2013
Basically, Penang will start crowing about cronuts . The marrying and frying of soft, flaky pastry of croissant and floury doughnut results in a hybrid called cronut created by a New York based chef. Now, what makes it addictive, especially for dessert lovers, is the sweet cream filling that simply oozes from every crevice of the cronut at every bite. Hold that thought for a moment.
Next up is, where can you try it? Rasa Sayang Resort and Spa’s Rasa Deli has scooped the title as the first ever to serve this in Penang. Their pastry chef, Dino Wan, has created six flavours to further enhance your cronut-eating experience.
There are toffee orange, lemon raspberry, chocolate brownie, apple crumble, Nutella banana and vanilla Oreo. Four of this six are basically, chocolate topped and filled with delicately flavoured pastry cream. It’s easy to imagine what each would taste like from their names but nothing will prepare you for what they're really like.
Chocolate brownie and apple crumble cronuts
Texture wise, each cronut is a cross between flaky pastry and doughy donut. Chef Dino Wan’s version is hardly oily despite the deep frying involved and he adds crunch with 3-dimensional cubes of cookies, slices of bananas or raspberries toppings, depending on the cronut flavour you choose.
Our personal favourite, the one that seems to stand apart from the other five, is the lemon raspberry. There’s a nice balance of tang, sweet and berry-fruity. Coming in at a close second is the apple crumble with its distinctive apple flavour. However, for chocolate lovers out there, the Nutella banana’s a terrific choice followed by toffee orange.
There is a small catch though. Cronuts are best eaten almost immediately after they’re prepared. They have a 2-hour shelf life or they’re unable to retain their delicious texture. That is why they’re only available between 3pm and 4pm daily and enjoy them as soon as you get home or at the hotel itself. Go get ‘em, people! Su Aziz