French chef ousts cupcake in US

FRENCH pastry chef Dominique Ansel has challenged the cupcake and the doughnut in their New York home with what has become the hottest product in the Big Apple – the cronut, a combination of croissant and doughnut.

Since Americans got first taste of the hybrid pastry they have fallen for its buttery, sugary charms and there are snaking lines outside the Dominique Ansel Bakery from as early as 6.30 - an hour and a half before opening.

There is even a pastry black market and Ansel’s $5 (€3.82) cronut is being offered on the Craigslist small-ads website at $40 (€30.57) apiece.

Ansel launched the cronut this month and it has generated much buzz and hyperbole from the fooderati, with Vogue magazine declaring 2013 the summer of the cronut while popular food blog Grub Street New York called the hybrid pastry life-changing.

Paris-born chef Ansel says the pastry is made from laminated dough similar to a croissant, proved, and then thrown in the deep fryer. While still hot, it is rolled in sugar, filled with cream, and topped with glaze.

He plans to launch a new flavour every month and debuted the cronut in a pink haze of Rose Vanilla made with rose sugar, Tahitian vanilla ganache, and a rose glaze topped with crystallized rose petals. The next version will be made over in a Lemon Maple glaze.

Ansel makes about 200 cronuts a day, but with a limit of six per customer and pre-dawn line-ups outside the store, it sells out within minutes; hence the rocketing demand on Craigslist.

Copycat bakers beware: the cronut is now an officially registered US and international trademark.

Ansel is well-known in the pastry circuit as being among the top in class. In 2010, he was chosen by Time Out New York as one of the city’s “Top 10 Pastry Chefs You need to Know,” and in 2009 named one of the “Top 10 Pastry Chefs in the US” by Dessert Professional Magazine.
Photo: Dominique Ansel Bakery