This Delightfully Crisp French Pastry Is the Lazy Person’s Doughnut

Crisp, sugar-coated, and pillowy soft within, a hot doughnut fresh from the fryer is a glorious thing. Making doughnuts from scratch, however, is a bit of a marathon. You have to prepare a yeasted dough, knead it, let it rise, shape it, then let it rise again—all before you even begin deep frying.

Luckily, there’s a speedier alternative for doughnut enthusiasts like myself: a French cruller. Unlike old-fashioned yeasted doughnuts or regular crullers, which are made with a yeasted dough, French crullers are made from choux pastry, the same batter used to prepare cream puffs, éclairs, and gougères. The thick batter takes about 20 minutes to make, and when deep-fried, it becomes an airy, doughnut-like pastry.

Getting the Choux Pastry Right

Choux pastry, also known as pâte à choux, is thicker than a batter but softer than a dough—it’s more of a paste. (Fun fact: the word “paste” shares a Latin root with “pastry” as well as the French equivalent, “pâte”.) To make it, you bring water and/or milk, butter, sugar, and salt to a simmer, add the flour, and cook the mixture while stirring constantly. It eventually thickens and pulls away from the sides of the pot. Eggs are beaten in one by one, often with the help of a stand mixer, until the batter becomes a smooth, pipeable consistency. 

Cooking the mixture on the stove hydrates and gelatinizes the starches within the flour, as Serious Eats editorial director Daniel touched on in his choux pastry recipe. This process traps water, which is essential for releasing steam as the choux bakes or fries. It also thickens the mixture from a liquid to a pipeable paste that can hold its shape even after the eggs are added.

Making pâte à choux may sound intimidating, but it’s really quite straightforward. Like Daniel, I recommend using an instant-read thermometer to temp your batter. To ensure the batter gelatinizes and swells, it should register between 165°F and 175°F (74 °C to 79°C). As for adding the eggs, you can do it by hand, but using a hand or stand mixer makes light work of it.

How to Pipe Crullers

While you can use a large zip-top bag to pipe your crullers, a dedicated piping bag is both easier to handle and less likely to burst, as piping bags are typically made with sturdier materials, such as canvas or thick plastic, and designed to withstand the pressure of piping. You’ll want to fit your bag with a French star pastry tip; the small ridges increase the surface area of the crullers and allow them to expand evenly without erupting as they bake.

Some fried doughs, including churros, can be piped directly into the frying oil. It’s more difficult to pipe neat rounds of choux directly into the oil, so I prefer to pipe the batter onto small parchment squares first. When you’re ready to fry, place the parchment choux side down into the oil. After a minute or so, the parchment will release itself from the cruller, and you’ll be able to easily pull it away with tongs.

Alternatively, you can pipe rings of choux pastry onto a parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet pan and freeze until solid. Once frozen, you can peel the rings from the parchment and place them into the oil. This is a great option, especially if you want to prepare the choux ahead of time. Just be sure to wipe away any ice crystals that may have formed on the surface of the choux, as any water will cause the hot oil to splatter.

If you don’t plan to cook them right away, the frozen rings of choux can be transferred to a zip-top bag and stored for up to a month, allowing you to enjoy a hot cruller anytime without having to make a fresh batch of choux pastry.

Tips for Successful Deep Frying

An ideal cruller is crisp on the outside with an airy, slightly custardy interior. Undercooked crullers will have a gooey, gummy interior that causes them to get soggy quickly, so be sure to cook the crullers until they’re deep golden brown, about five minutes per side. Ensuring your oil is about 350°F (175°C) before you begin frying is key. If the oil is too hot, the exterior of the crullers will burn before the inside has time to cook through. Conversely, if the oil isn’t hot enough, the choux batter will be less crisp and feel greasier after it has been cooked.

A five- or six-quart Dutch oven is an ideal vessel for deep-frying, as they’re heavy enough to retain a consistent temperature and large enough to fry four to five crullers at once. But if you don’t have one, any heavy pot or pan with high sides will work. Keep in mind that lightweight cookware may heat unevenly, making it harder to control the oil temperature. Avoid anything with a nonstick coating, which can be damaged by repeated exposure to high heat. 

When ready to fry, fill the pan with about three inches of oil, and be sure to use something neutral, such as canola, vegetable, or sunflower oil. For best results, heat the pan slowly over medium heat and monitor the oil’s temperature closely—use an instant-read thermometer, or better yet, clip a probe or candy thermometer to the side of the pan. Once the oil hits 350°F, you’re ready to fry.

The Finishing Touches

As soon as the crullers are cool enough to handle, you’ll want to add your finishing touches by dipping the crullers in a vanilla glaze or coating them with cinnamon sugar. I prefer to glaze the crullers while they’re still warm, as the residual heat makes the glaze slightly runnier and helps it set into a thin, even coating. If you prefer a thicker layer of glaze, you can wait until the crullers have cooled.

If you plan on coating them in cinnamon sugar, however, the crullers must be hot and fresh from the fryer in order for the sugar mixture to adhere. Once cooled, there won’t be enough residual hot oil to help the cinnamon sugar stick. If you’ve lost track of time and your crullers are too cool to glaze, brush them with some melted butter, then toss them in the sugar to evenly coat. 

Vanilla glaze and cinnamon sugar are both classic options, but feel free to experiment with other flavors. Try swapping the cream in the vanilla glaze for coffee or lemon juice. And instead of cinnamon sugar, you could try a citrus variation by combining the sugar with the zest of one lemon or half an orange, then rubbing the mixture together until fragrant. French crullers are also delicious with any number of creamy or fruity fillings.

To fill one, use a paring knife to poke two small holes in the cruller’s bottom—one on the left and one on the right—then use a piping bag to inject some pastry cream, jam, or your filling of choice. You want to pipe in a generous amount of filling; you’ll know the pastry is adequately filled when it’s heavy but not bursting.

To Bake or to Fry?

A baked cruller is essentially a ring-shaped éclair: Delicious, but simply not the same, as it won’t have the crisp fried exterior. That said, if you’d rather skip the fryer, baked crullers are almost as tasty and slightly less fussy to make. Simply brush the crullers with a thin layer of beaten egg, then bake them on the middle rack of the oven at 400°F (205°C) until they’re deep golden brown and firm to the touch, about 20 minutes.

Once baked, use the tip of a paring knife to poke a few small holes in the bottom of crullers to help release steam, which will prevent them from deflating and becoming soggy as they cool. When the crullers have cooled slightly, you can give them a light glaze or brush them with a bit of melted butter before rolling in cinnamon sugar.

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