Sure, this isn't my first experience with cronuts, that honor was bestowed to Cocomaya - and oh, what an honor it is to be eaten by me - but I knew that I wasn't finished with these pastries. I love doughnuts, I love croissants, I love trends that other people roll their eyes at - so of course I'm all in with the cronut craze.
Among the cronut providers in the UK (here's a great guide for those of you who don't know them off by heart) the one that seems to get the toppest of top marks is Rinkoff Bakery. They have two locations, but unfortunately for me they're both sort of out of my way and in areas of London that I feel I'd just end up lost in.
So, I've just been hanging my head and trying to convince my office to make an order for delivery, haha.
I follow Rinkoff on Twitter, so I've been keeping track of their stockists across London; again, up until recently they've been in areas of London that I'd just never be at early in the morning, haha.
I noticed sometime last week that they were being stocked at a Shoreditch coffee house, Translate, and that's a much more reasonable trek for me to make during the workday. So, I added the coffee place in question on Twitter, and thought I'd stop by on a morning when they mentioned having cronuts in, assuming they wouldn't always be there.
A few hours after I added Translate on Twitter, they made the best decision a business has ever made: they tweeted at me about brownies. That's when I knew I was going to be there within an hour - because these brownies had Oreos crammed into them, and Translate had enough confidence in their tastiness to specifically call them to my attention - that's a real good sign. Or rather, 'goo' sign. Get it, brownies? Goo? Ah, you get it.
So at lunch I headed off, for the brownies - but with the idea that maybe, just maybe they'd also have a couple cronuts in.
As you've probably guessed by everything I wrote so far, yeah, they had a couple left!
I got the chocolate fudge variety, and it is super big! The topping is all a delicious chocolate icing, sort of like fondant in that it stays cool on your tongue. The chocolate flavor is more along the lines of dark chocolate than milk, which is a great combination with the crodough itself - which is covered in cinnamon sugar.
I'd say it is more similar to a croissant in texture than the Cocomaya version was, flakier, oilier, and less dense. When I cut a bit of it off for the photo, it cleaved in flaky layers - whereas the Cocomaya one was a bit more on the cake doughnut spectrum. Believe me, it was plenty good - this one from Rinkoff just did a slightly better job of appearing to be a cross between a croissant and a doughnut.
Inside there were globs of chocolate, similar to what is found in a pan au chocolat - somewhere in between solid and liquid. Goo? A nice, firm goo.
Since it is a bit oily (not a bad thing), flaky, and covered in cinnamon sugar it does remind me a bit of a churro - which is only magnified by the dark chocolate on top! It is softer than a churro, so the texture isn't exactly there, but the taste certainly is. If you like cinnamon sugar & chocolate, which you should, you'd love this one. It tastes a bit like 'Mexican chocolate' tastes - if you've had Abuelita, you know what I mean.
As for the brownie, well, that was incredible. Pure goo, pure fudge, pure squidge, with a few soft cherries or raisins inside...and an Oreo on top. I'd already eaten 75 percent of it by the time this photo was taken!
Perfect texture, if you ask me. Cake-y brownies can go straight to the bottom of a sundae! There, I said it! Feels good.
I suggest if you're near Shoreditch you stop by Translate. I'm no coffee expert, but the latte I had was also quite nice, so get one of those and a crodough if you're lucky, a brownie if you're a bit late, or both if you are me/gluttonous.
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