A photo posted by Old Town Italy (@oldtownitaly) on Mar 4, 2016 at 2:40am PST

Forget the cronut – Durban’s hottest dessert trend is the conut, a cone-shaped doughnut filled with scoops of ice cream, newly available at Old Town Italy in Umhlanga Rocks.

Baker Caitlin Nel explains that these majestic treats are created with bombolone (doughnut) dough, which is wrapped around a cone horn to get that familiar gelato-cradling shape and then deep fried, before being rolled in cinnamon sugar. Then, in a genius move, the point of the cone is dipped in chocolate, “just for something exciting at the end.”

The new conuts were taken for their first spin this past weekend by Old Town Italy head baker Vanessa Smith, Caitlin and the team, and they proved to be a hit. “I think we sold out in the first two hours,” says Caitlin.  

A photo posted by Old Town Italy (@oldtownitaly) on Mar 5, 2016 at 2:51am PST

 

The cones are placed on display alongside the usual ice-cream receptacles (putting them to shame, no doubt) and customers can choose how many scoops of gelato they’d like. Caitlin recommends the popular vanilla, chocolate and pistachio flavours, as well as the blue-hued cotton candy version. R45 gets you a conut with one scoop, with the option to add another scoop for R20 each.

The cones were inspired by the recent storm on social media over ice creams served in a cone-shaped chimney cake, or trdelník, a traditional Romanian pastry – although Old Town’s version is more doughnut than trdelník.

A photo posted by Maraya & Lynsey (@stuffmumslike) on Feb 26, 2016 at 9:31pm PST

Old Town Italy is also big with the locals for its croissant-doughnut hybrid, the cronut, and if all this sweet talk has your savoury tooth tingling, you can find salvation in their bacon-and-cheese croissants, too.