There's a new craze sweeping through town. Cronuts. People all over are talking about them. Everywhere I go – supermarket, post office, gym, on the bus – I hear cronut whispers: "I'm going to get a cronut." "I've just eaten a cronut." "Sebastian surprised me this morning in bed with cronuts." "Justin's not going to Boot Camp on Saturday morning. He's minding the kids while I queue early for cronuts. We can't bear to disappoint the kids again." "Have you tried a cronut yet? No! You haven't lived."
Truth be told, I haven't boarded a bus for about twenty-five years and the gym, well that's a sad tale for another time. However, it is true that folk are queueing for this new food phenomenon. There's talk of mutiny, or at least unfairness, at the new sign in the cafe window: 5 Cronuts Per Customer Only.
Which, if there are six of you in a cronut frenzy then the Justins will have to beg neighbours to arise at the crack of dawn to watch sleeping children in order to accompany the wives in the queue.
Barely blinking an eye at scenes of Guantanamo Bay detention camp on the telly news, the queuers morph into a line of braying malcontents when the CRONUTS SOLD OUT sign is held aloft by a nervous-looking cafe worker. Instead of cronut flakes on their tongues, they taste vitriole and defeat.
"I told you to hurry, Justin. This is all your fault. You didn't need shoes."
A cronut for those of you who have had their ears shut is, as it sounds, a mixture of a croissant and a donut. Never being fond of croissants, liking donuts but despising queues, I hadn't the slightest inclination to join the chomping masses. Lucky me, though, because my niece and her cronut-crazed boyfriend dropped in to my house early last Saturday morning with a bag of saturated fat, sugar and dough. Cronuts. We shared a lemon curd, a chocolate and a splodge-of-berry-something-on-the-top ones.
The Verdict: flaky, crunchy-ish, dripping with fat on the outside and sugary on the inside, topped with one or other of the flavours. Lemon curd won the day. They were a sinful breakfast and left me full and sludgy all day no matter how much water I drank. I could feel my teeth disintegrating and my fat cells filling.
Do I understand the cronut madness? Absolutely not. Are people so bored that a new pastry can gain proportions so monumental as to make queueing seem dignified? Would I have another one? No, I wouldn't bother but then I'm more a Marmite or cheese on toast girl.
There's an idea. Perhaps for us savoury tooths they could make a Marmite and cheese cronut sans sugar. Of course that would still leave the problem of the queueing (or not). I'll remain loyal to my green juices for breakfast and the occasional afghan. I doubt cronut fever will last and I'm certain they won't get a mention in the history books. A new food fad will appear any minute. I just hope it's savoury.