Cronuts, the avant-garde brainchild from Dominique Ansel Bakery, have taken over New York City. What is a cronut, you ask? It's croissant dough, shaped like a donut, then fried in grape seed oil and topped or stuffed with a creamy treat. It's only been three weeks, but it has since gotten a stranglehold on the pastry scene. It's the new cupcake, basically, and we want it bad.

The cronut has also created the perfect storm for a $40-a-pop black market. Given our culture's adherence to all things cute and twee, as well as our unyielding desire to wait in impossible lines for food, it makes sense. And the sweet treats are so coveted in New York already that the bakery has capped customers to an enforced six-cronut limit.

"I don't even care what it tastes like," Katherine DeVita told NY Daily News while waiting in line. "I just want one!" So do we... but when will the cronut make its way West Coast? WHEN?! Until that day arrives, we have been left to make our our own cronut (which cannot be called a "cronut," because Ansel has trademarked the name already), using harrowing store-bought ingredients. Brace yourselves.