What I’m about to tell you is the honest to goodness truth. The events of the past few months are what legends are made of, and if I hadn’t witnessed it unfolding myself, I probably would not have believed it. The problem with most legends is that you never really know where the truth leaves off and where exaggeration begins, but witnessing one unfold will make great storytelling in the future.
New York City is the place where many legends have been created. There are numerous actors, artists, designers, comedians and most recently chefs, who credit New York City as the launching pad for their successful careers.
The events of the past few months could only have unfolded in New York City, and I say that with great respect. It’s one of the few places on this planet that has truly earned the reputation as one of the food meccas of the world. Where else in the world do you have such a melting pot of culture, talent, power and money that can quickly come together to create an overnight sensation.
Well, that’s exactly what happened with the Cronut™…
The what?
Stick with me here as you are not only going to learn how to make a delicious treat, but also read about a great story that will end up as a case study in business school.
Back in May, an extraordinarily talented Pastry Chef named Dominique Ansel, launched a new product out of his chic SoHo bakery of the same name. The product he calls a Cronut™, is a cross between a croissant and a donut, and whose recipe is reported to have taken several months to perfect. The labor intensive process creates a fermented dough that is laminated with butter to create many flaky layers, then cut into donut shapes and fried. Once they have cooled, the Cronuts™ are then poked and filled with custard, rolled in sugar and then glazed.
The bakery only produces one flavor per month and the entire process, from start to finish can take up to 3 days. When the product was first presented to the public in May, they launched the first batch of Cronuts™ with a vanilla rose flavored cream. The full service bakery that also sells many other items, figured that they would be covered if they made 150 for their launch, but sold out in a matter of hours. Since then, mayhem has taken over the Manhattan neighborhood where lines of customers wait with great anticipation and hope to snag one before they sell out.
The bakery has increased production to keep up with demand, and today they are making between 300-350 donuts per day, and are still selling out by noon. They have even had to implement a 2 per person limit, so that everyone, or as many people as possible, have a chance to purchase their very own Cronut™.
If you plan to camp out early, bring lots of cash – your purchase will set you back $5 for each one. Each month the bakery offers a new flavor and since May, some of the other flavors have been lemon maple, blackberry lime, passion fruit and the flavor for August is coconut.
Here is a glimpse of what the front of the bakery looks like in the morning with people waiting upwards of 3-4 hours to purchase 2 Cronuts™.
What has the world come to? It’s madness I tell you, total madness…
It has created such pandemonium that the bakery has also had to limit the quantity of bulk orders to only a few dozen per person, and they are even thinking about doing away with bulk purchasing altogether. Apparently, when some bulk orders are placed, they are then re-sold (or rather scalped) in a far reaching part of town. Some entrepreneurial people have even started a delivery service for these scalped Cronuts™, and charge upwards of $40 per piece!
The Huffington Post reported that an advertisement was recently placed on Craigslist for sexual favors in exchange for a few Cronuts.
Again, I’m not kidding, you read that right…
All of this talk of Cronuts™ has me wondering just how good these really are. I recently read about a situation where Anthony Bourdain agreed to sit in one evening for the absent Piers Morgan for a taping of his popular talk show when he discovered that the featured guest was going to be Chef Ansel.
Really?
We are talking THE Anthony Bourdain who has savored cuisine created by top chefs from every continent around the world, and he too is adding Cronuts™ to his favorites list?
In the end, this whole saga is going down in history as a revolutionary new creation. The bakery’s Facebook page has almost 10,000 fans, and the craze is still going strong. Far off lands like the UK, Indonesia, Phillipines and now Hong Kong have created their own versions, and Canada has even gone as far as creating something called a Cronut Burger.
In addition to keeping up with the demands of the bakery, Chef Ansel is struggling to protect the name and the product by trade marking the Cronut™ name nationally and consulting with attorneys to halt the international copycats as well. These knockoffs developed by other bakeries are sold under names like the French Donut, CroNots, Dossant, Doissant, Crescent Donuts, Croissant Donuts, etc…well, you get the idea.
This cannot be labeled as normal marketing buzz, and even the word frenzy is underwhelming in describing what is taking place. Cronut™ Mania has reached new heights of hysteria as customers fall into convulsions of ecstasy at the mere mention of the name.
When I make it back to New York in a few months, I will make sure to pre-order mine so that I’m guaranteed to get one. With all of the wonderful treats and sights that New York offers, we can now add the Cronut™ to the bucket list of things to try. As you visit the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street or take the ferry over to Ellis Island, make sure to grab yourself a bagel from Murray’s, a cookie from Levain, a hotdog from Gray’s Papaya and a Cronut™ from Dominique’s.
History in the making? Yeah, I think so…
With all of this craziness, I had to try and create my own. I looked at pictures showing the flakiness of the product and have created a great recipe that you can try for yourself. They are so flaky and chewy yet crusty and tender.
I picked up a few tricks along the way as I developed this great little recipe…
- Use both milk and water in the dough, the milk acts as a tenderizer while the water maintains the crispness
- Add some butter for richness to the dough itself, but save most of it to be folded in to create the layers
- Make at least 2 double turns and 2 single turns to get the right number of layers
- Make sure that the temperature of the oil is moderately hot. If it is too hot the Cronuts™ will burn and stay raw in the center, and if the oil is too cold the layers will come apart. Once the Cronuts™ are placed in the oil, it must be hot enough to instantly set the dough. They will begin to puff and you will be able to clearly see the layers. When one side has cooked, gently flip and cook the other side.
- Don’t have too much oil in your fry pot, it should be just enough to easily flip the Cronut™
- One piece of advice I would suggest to Chef Ansel, and that is to skip the custard cream that is currently used to fill the Cronuts™ and use a delicate butter cream instead. I filled mine with a chocolate butter cream and it offered an extraordinary contrast to the crispy pastry without making it soggy. It also increased the shelf life! After filling them, do not refrigerate them, but leave them at room temperature…that is if there are any left.
Chocolate Butter Cream
½ cup egg whites
3 oz corn syrup
6 oz sugar
¼ cup water
2 stick unsalted butter
4 oz dark chocolate, melted
For directions on how to make your own butter cream, click here.
Copy Cat Cronuts™
3 ½ cups of flour (500g)
14 grams yeast (2 packets)
120 grams water, warm
130 grams milk, warm
¼ cup sugar
1 tablespoon salt
50 grams butter, softened butter added to dough
250 grams butter + 2 tablespoons flour, **Butter gets folded in
Add the yeast to the bowl of your stand mixer and add in the warm water and milk. Whisk this well until the yeast is dissolved. Add in all of the flour and on top of this add the sugar and the salt and the 50 grams of softened butter. Using your paddle or dough hook and begin working the ingredients together for about 5 minutes and then turn out the dough onto your counter. Continue to work the dough on the counter until it is no longer sticky but rather a smooth, uniform ball of dough. Place this into a small bowl and allow this dough to rise for 2 hours, covered with plastic wrap and tea towels.
Twenty minutes before using your dough, remove the 250 grams of butter from the refrigerator and cut it into 4 slabs. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of flour over the parchment paper and then lay the pieces of butter side by side on a piece of parchment paper. Sprinkle the other tablespoon of flour on top of this and then cover it with another piece of parchment. Use your rolling pin to press the butter together into one thin slab and then set this aside.
Once the dough has risen, pour it out onto your surface and roll out into a long rectangle.
Add the slab of butter you just rolled out onto half of the dough, fold over the other half and seal the edges. Roll this out into a rectangle and do a single turn.
Then cover the dough and let it rest in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
After the hour is up, remove from the refrigerator, roll out into a rectangle again and do one double turn.
Cover and refrigerate again for one hour. Repeat with another single turn and a double turn, along with the one hour refrigerated intervals. After the final double turn, allow the dough to rest for one last hour and then cut it in half. Keep the part that you are not working with wrapped in the refrigerator. You can already see the many layers that you have created.
Roll out the other half that you half placed on your counter to the thickness of about ½” and use your cutter to cut out the Cronuts. Depending on the size cutter you are using, you will get anywhere from 6-8 pieces from half of the dough. Place the cut out pieces on a parchment lined tray, cover them with plastic and refrigerate them overnight.
The next morning, pull the tray of Cronuts™ from the refrigerator and allow them to proof at room temperature for 60-90 minutes. They should look like this…
Begin to heat your oil, and place a test piece of dough into the oil before beginning to fry the actual Cronuts™. I always like to do this to check if I need to adjust the temperature before adding the real thing, and for this item, this is very important. Add them to the oil and the will soon begin to puff up as the layers cook and create steam, and will look like this…
Cook one half and then flip it over to cook the other half, this also helps to keep the layers intact. Once they are golden brown, remove them from the oil and drain them on a paper lined tray. Roll them in the granulated sugar while they are still warm. If you are going to fill them with a custard cream, poke a few holes and do that next, then glaze them. I chose to use a chocolate butter cream recipe instead because it was not only better than the custard, but the Cronut™ was not as perishable and lasted much longer.
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