The Cronut Turns 10
The Cronut Turns 10
Dominique Ansel’s creation continues to turn heads by Andrea Adleman
The spring of 2013 is classified as B.C. in the history of Dominique Ansel Bakery.
“Before Cronut” was the age of orderly, if exhausting, routine. The eponymous pastry chef and his staff of four ran the Soho bakery to the chef’s exacting standards.
Ansel had almost 20 years of experience in pastry when his wife and business partner, Amy Ma, suggested a doughnut. As a foreigner, he was unfamiliar with the doughnut genre and unbound by the standard conceit. He exercised the liberty to defy convention and tested 10 versions before finalizing his Cronut recipe.
Mother’s Day incentivized Ansel to stretch creatively and fashion a doughnut-like pastry worthy of the occasion. It went on sale and appeared in a blog post for Mother’s Day weekend 2013.
Needless to say, the pastry was a hit.
Time magazine named Cronut among the “25 best inventions of the year 2013.” Ansel subsequently won the 2014 James Beard Foundation Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef. Three years later, the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards recognized Ansel as World’s Best Pastry Chef. When he received this distinction at age 39, he was the youngest person and the first U.S.-based chef to win. In between, France extended its second highest honor to Ansel, granting him an Ordre du Mérite Agricole award in 2015.
A decade later, the Cronut is still as popular as ever.
So what, exactly, is a Cronut anyway? Typically, it’s characterized as a croissant-doughnut hybrid. Technically speaking, it is not.
Ansel defines the Cronut as the “perfect combination of a flaky, layered dough with the texture of a croissant in a doughnut shape.”
A classically trained French chef, Ansel defines it as the “perfect combination of a flaky, layered dough with the texture of a croissant in a doughnut shape.” It’s not traditional croissant dough, but a proprietary variation. To keep customers coming back for more, the Cronut flavor changes every month and is never repeated, making the pastry an edible collector’s item of sorts. April 2023’s flavor, for example, was Blackberry & Coconut, filled with blackberry jam and creamy coconut ganache.
It seems the Cronut has obtained a kind of celebrity status, including having its own fan club. Employees of the Upper West Side Apple Store formed the Cronut Club in 2016 when Steve Shukow decided to surprise a coworker and her friends with Cronuts for her birthday. When the group learned the Cronut changes flavor, they vowed to return monthly to try the latest iteration. The group plans a recurring field trip to the bakery on the third Friday of the month at noon to enjoy the baked treat.
Each day, lines form at the New York City bakery, well before the doors open at 8 a.m. (9 a.m. on Sunday), with people hoping to claim one of the 350 Cronuts baked daily (they’re priced at $7 each).
Dominique Ansel Bakery also accepts preorders up to two weeks in advance (find details at cronutpreorder.com). If you want to order more than 50 Cronuts at a time, you will get some preferential treatment (so forget that wedding cake and be prepared to stack those Cronuts like a pyramid). Finally, out-of-town fans can order online at dominiqueanselonline.com.
The bakery observes the Cronut’s anniversary each May with retrospective Cronut holes. Five previous Cronut flavors are shaped into pastries the size of golf balls and packaged in a rectangular box.
The 10-year celebration takes place May 5 to 7 with commemorative Cronut holes available at the Soho bakery and shipped nationally. So, be sure to wish your Cronut a happy birthday as you take a bite.
