Perth Voice Interactive

A LOVE triangle between doughnuts, croissants and muffins has the next generation of desserts upon us.

Introducing the duffin, cruffin and cronut—the lovechildren of doughnuts and muffins, croissants and muffins, and croissants and doughnuts.

Voice reporter Emmie Dowling went above and beyond, tasting them for readers on a cafe/bakery crawl in Perth the other week. You’re welcome.

CRONUT

$7.50 at Sugar & Nice, 882 Beaufort St, Inglewood

The most well-known of the dessert hybrids, the cronut looks like a doughnut but tastes more like a croissant.

Its buttery pastry is shaped in a ring and dressed in sugar. At Sugar & Nice, I order a salted caramel which comes with cream filling and is topped with drizzled chocolate, popcorn, oreo cookie crumbles and a pretzel. Cafe owner Marnee Rinaldi tells me the cronut recipe changes every week, and on Thursdays she posts a pic of the new creation on the cafe’s Instagram account.

If you’re partial to ice cream, go to Whisk Creamery in Subiaco. It features towering ice cream sandwiches constructed of cronuts.

DUFFIN

$4.50 at Second Ave IGA’s bakery, Beaufort St, Mount Lawley

Foodies have really cooked the recipe books on this one. The duffin is a doughnut/muffin and has also been called the “monut” and “muffnut” by social media devotees. I imagined a doughnut-shaped muffin, but I got the opposite. It was a dense, muffin-shaped, jam-filled, lavish cinnamon doughnut. It was huge—probably the same size and weight as a grapefruit. I shared it with my better half, Pablo, who says it’s tastier than the cruffin.

CRUFFIN

$4.50 at Trackside Bakery, 420 Wellington St, Perth (near Perth railway station)

Probably the most elusive of the three hybrids, the cruffin is basically a muffin-shaped croissant. The bakery, which has been an institution at the station since 1998, only started selling cruffins last month. I shared some with teenagers Marcus and Blake at Perth railway station. They say it tastes like a muffin. Odd—I thought it tasted more like a croissant. Kids know nuffin about cruffin.