A modern take on a sweet from the past is all the rage

With 600 million pounds of candy with a street value of nearly $2 billion sold each year at Halloween, it's obvious that Snickers, M&M's and Hershey bars are the preferred treats of the ghosts and goblins who will be at your door in a few days.

It hasn't always been this way. Years ago Halloween meant doughnuts. In fact, the connection between Halloween and doughnuts goes all the way back to the very beginning of our Halloween customs, around the 9th century. That's when the trick-or-treating ritual began as Christians on Halloween would engage in a practice called "souling," wherein they would go door to door begging for what were called soul cakes. Ultimately, soul cakes morphed into doughnuts and became a common Halloween treat.

Alas, these days the connection between Halloween and doughnuts has been diminished by the ubiquity of packaged candy bars. This year, however, might be the perfect time to resurrect the relationship because this is the year of perhaps the biggest doughnut craze in history -- the cronut.

The cronut, invented by Chef Dominique Ansel, is essentially the soul of a croissant in the body of a doughnut. It's hardly the first pastry hybrid to hit the market. There was the brookie -- a combination brownie and chocolate chip cookie -- the cake pop, and the most outlandish of them all, the cherpumple, consisting of pies (usually cherry, pumpkin and apple, hence the name) baked inside cake layers which are stacked and frosted -- a veritable turducken of desserts.

But the cronut has been the most wildly successful of all pastry combos. When I was at Ansel's bakery in New York City a few weeks ago, for example, the line for cronuts stretched out the shop and down the block. People at the front of the line told me they had been waiting more than four hours for the privilege of paying $5 for one cronut. That's $60 a dozen, of course, but the treat has become so popular there is a limit of two per customer.

A square version of the cronut, dubbed the crumbnut, is available at the Crumbs bakery chain in New York City. (TOM HARTE)

Ansel was shrewd enough to trademark the name of his invention, but that hasn't kept bakeries all over New York, and, for that matter, all over the country, from offering their own knock-offs under a different name. In the Big Apple, the Crumbs bakery chain is calling their square version crumbnuts; in Chicago they're called crognets; in Washington, D.C., doissants; in Cincinnati doughsants; in Baltimore croi-nuts; and in Boston cro-nots. The least imaginative of these, though among the best I've tasted, is the one at Frances Bakery in Los Angeles, dubbed simply the croissant-doughnut.

Having traveled coast to coast in search of cronuts, I am happy to report that the craze has finally reached the Midwest. Schnucks is now selling them, labeled as cro-so-nuts, and they compare favorably with their competitors around the country. Of course, armed with some puff pastry and a deep-fat fryer, you can make your own.

However you get them, I think you'll agree, for Halloween a cronut sure beats the heck out of a candy bar, a popcorn ball, or, most assuredly, an apple.

Homemade Cronuts

When it comes to cronuts, there's little trick to making the treat using this straightforward recipe adapted from Chatelaine.com.

A batch of "cronuts" in the deep fat fryer at Schnucks bakery are browned on one side and ready for turning. (TOM HARTE)

2 sheets packaged puff pastry

1 tablespoon melted butter

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

Vegetable oil for frying

As part of his coast-to-coast search for the perfect "cronut," Tom Harte samples the version available at the Frances Bakery in downtown Los Angeles. (TOM HARTE)

* Thaw pastry if frozen and, if folded, unroll into a single layer on a lightly floured surface. Brush one-third of the dough with melted butter.

* Fold buttered third of dough over the next third of dough, leaving one-third of dough exposed as if you were folding a letter.

* Brush top of folded double layer of dough with butter and fold remaining third of dough over it. Press gently to seal layers but do not flatten. Chill for 30 minutes.

* Meanwhile combine sugar and cinnamon and heat oil to 350 degrees. Cut dough into rounds, cutting a hole in the center of each.

* Fry cronuts until golden brown on undersides, about 2 minutes, then flip and fry another 2-3 minutes until entire cronut is a deep golden brown.

Hot "cronuts" from the fryer take a journey through a rainfall of icing at the Schnucks bakery. (TOM HARTE)

* Cool slightly and roll in cinnamon/sugar mixture or, if desired, drizzle with glaze or split and fill with crème anglaise.

Tom Harte's book, "Stirring Words," is available at local bookstores. A Harte Appetite airs Fridays 8:49 a.m. on KRCU, 90.9 FM. Contact Tom at semissourian.com or at the Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, MO 63702-0699.