“Pastry Pete is so brilliant. Did you know he won a Tasty Num Nums Award last year for combining crullers and bundt cakes?! They’re called ‘Crunts’!”
-Bertie, Tuca & Bertie S01E01
I’m an enormous fan of Lisa Hanawalt. I love her work on Bojack Horseman, I love her solo artwork (check out Coyote Doggirl, folks!) and I love her on the podcast Baby Geniuses. When I heard Lisa was getting her own adult animated series on Netflix, Tuca & Bertie, I lost my mind a little bit.
Tuca & Bertie has only been out for 2 days, so I’ve only had the chance to watch a few episodes. So far it’s the exact kind of love-letter-to-gross-lady-friendship I’d hoped for. This show is jam packed with weirdness beyond my wildest dreams.
The first episode was also packed with pastries, which was an extremely nice surprise for me. The plot takes T&B to a bakery called Pâtisserie du Pastry Pete, where a penguin named Pastry Pete creates lots of truly wild sweets. There’s a snake cake and a boob cannoli in there, y’all.
Bertie is especially in love with Pete’s “crunts”: a combination of crullers and bundt cake that Tuca correctly assesses as having the worst name ever. I made some anyway.
Listen, guys, cronuts are just donut-shaped croissants with a glaze suitable for donuts. I decided that crunts were just bundt-shaped crullers with a glaze suitable for a bundt cake. I flavored them with both orange and brown sugar, a combination that I think suites Tuca & Bertie in addition to being crazy tasty. I’ve watched my husband polish off 4 of them just in the time it took me to write this entry, so I’d say I did alright!
ORANGE CRUNTS
225g (2 cups) all purpose flour
180ml (3/4 cup) whole milk
120ml (1/2 cup) water
110g (1 stick) butter
2 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
4 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract OR 1/2 scraped vanilla bean
Zest of 1 orange (reserve orange juice for glaze)
Oil for suitable for deep frying (peanut oil or vegetable oil)
You will also need: A flower-shaped donut/bundt mold (link at the end of this entry!), non-stick spray or neutral flavored oil, parchment paper.
- In a saucepan, combine the water, milk, sugar, salt and butter. Bring to a rolling boil, then add in the flour all at once and mix vigorously. The mix will form into a firm ball. Continue mixing over the heat until the dough ball leaves a film on the bottom of the saucepan. Transfer the hot dough into the bowl of a stand mixer and mix it on the lowest speed until it’s only a little warm to the touch.
- Begin adding your eggs one at a time, incorporating each egg fully before adding the next. Add the vanilla and orange zest. Once everything is well combined, transfer the dough to a piping bag. Snip 1/2″ off the end of the piping bag.
- Spray the interior of a fluted silicone donut/bundt mold with a non-stick spray (or rub it with oil). Pipe the dough into the cavities to be roughly flush with the top. Rub a little of the oil or spray onto your fingers and pat down the dough to be level with the top. (Images below!)
- Cut out 12 squares of parchment paper to be a little larger than the cavities of your mold, then place a piece on top of each piped crunt.
- At this point you can either refrigerate the dough in the mold for half an hour to make unmolding slightly easier, or you can unmold immediately with a bit more care. Turn over the mold and gently coax the molded dough pieces out one at a time. I found pressing lightly on one side just to release the dough and letting gravity do the rest resulted in the least distortion of the shape. If a crunt comes out particularly wonky you can either press it into a better shape using your fingers or re-press it into the mold and try again.
- Fill a deep skillet or a broad saucepan with at least 2″/5cm of oil. Clip a thermometer to the pot and heat the oil to 350°F/175°C. Fry your crunts about 3-4 at a time, taking care not to crowd the pan. Use a slotted spoon to gently lower them in parchment side down. After 1-2 minutes, the crunt should begin to float and you should be able to remove the parchment piece using tongs or a slotted spoon. Continue to fry until the underside is golden brown (about another minute) before flipping the crunts and allowing the other side to brown for an additional 2-3 minutes. Remove the crunts from the oil with a slotted spoon and place them on a bed of paper towels to drain off excess oil and cool a bit.
BROWN SUGAR & ORANGE GLAZE
60g (1/3 cup) brown sugar, packed
30g (2 tbsp.) butter
Juice of 1 orange
100-200g (1-2 cups) powdered sugar
- Combine the butter, sugar and orange juice in a bowl. Microwave until the butter is melted and the orange juice heated up but not boiling. (This takes about a minute in my microwave, but your mileage may vary.) Whisk to combine and dissolve the brown sugar.
- Allow to cool, then whisk in the powdered sugar bit by bit until you’ve received the desired consistency. Glaze the crunts simply by dipping the tops of the pastry into the glaze.
The addition of orange zest and vanilla makes these scrumptious even without the glaze, but they’re truly amazing warm and fresh with some glaze drizzled on. A small heads up: since this is a choux dough, these have a habit of expanding and puffing up in somewhat unwieldy ways. Most of mine turned out looking how I expected, but a few of them really went off the rails. Honestly? Those were the most delicious fresh out of the frying oil, because the bigger cracks resulted in more crisp outer crust goodness. You won’t hear me complaining.
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