Cocodough from Cocomaya, 10th June

I was disappointed before I’d even bought my Cocodough – they were all tiny and they were all expensive. But they were meant to be good and I’d rushed here in my lunch hour to get one so get one I did. I picked the flavour (from chocolate, salted caramel, vanilla and red velvet among others) based on which seemed to be the biggest. Lemon it was. They were all very pretty, most decorated with curls or petals and pretty pastel colours.

I paid my £3.50 (*balk*) and had my cocodough boxed up. But as time was running out I decided to eat it on the way back to the office. A mistake. I hadn’t realized that piped through was a lemon crème patisserie that spurted out at the first bite all over my skirt and continually leaked as I ate it. It was a lovely and tasty surprise but it 
did leave me rather sticky.

The cronut itself was pretty faultless – it had a bit of a crust, a proper doughnut texture, the requisite layers of a croissant and the lemon crème was luscious – tasted like lemon curd but much lighter. But, it was small and it was expensive. Small and cheap? Ok. Big and expensive? Yeah, sure. One or the other. But I guess that’s what you get from a West London chocolatier and patisserie in the leafy environs of Hyde Park (looking at the other baked goods and confections, they were all similarly wince-inducing). Tasty as it was, it made me wistful for the beasts you can get from Rinkoff, a mere quarter of which satisfies a cronut craving at a much cheaper price!
  

Rinkoff Bakery (Crodoughs), 25th August

If you don't know that the crodough, or doughsant or whatever it is that third place that does them is calling it has landed in the UK then you're probably not much of a foodie. And you won't know that it's supposed to be a cross between a doughnut and a croissant and was invented in New York and patented (copyrighted? whatever) so no one else can use that exact name. But three places over here have come up with their own version and one of those places is a bakery that I used to live literally down the road from. I would never have pegged it as a place to bring an NY trend to London and feel bad I used to walk past it with barely a glance. 

That place is Rinkoff's bakery and it has been going for something like 100 years and is a proper, traditional bakery that, considering how much I loved bread and other baked goods, really deserved my attention before becoming a crodough seller. But I only heard about it due to the crodough and so of course I had to go and try one,

I got there at about 1 pm when it shuts at 2. I thought they might be all out but there were still loads of them! Perhaps the cronut hasn't caused quite the stir I thought it had. There was just one young guy working who seemed kind of sweet if not a little surly due to being at that age when talking to people is kind of awkward. 

They had three flavours on offer - custard, raspberry and apple crumble. I got one custard and one apple and Stephen and I shared them. They also had an interesting looking onion bread but there was only so much dough I felt I should eat in a day, and the crodoughs are pretty hefty. And not cheap - my two cost me just under £6.

But they were delicious. The outside was ever so slightly overdone I would say, which I liked, and the inside had all the different layers you expect from a croissant. To be honest, I saw someone say on Twitter once that they just sounded like yum yums and I think they have a point! But a lot heavier and more filling. The apple crumble one was by far my favourite. It's going to be hard to resist making these a regular feature, knowing they're only a couple of tube stops away!