What would Cro-Magnon man have made of a world full of sugared-up cronutphiles?
There were rumours that the confection was being sold at eight times the shop price
AT my favourite coffee shop, I was presented with a piece of confectionery called a cronut. The proprietor had recently added it to his menu and wanted me to taste it.
It looks like a typical doughnut, all crisp and sugary, but on the inside it has the consistency of a flaky, freshly baked croissant and is topped off with melted chocolate or white sugar glazing. If you like, you can ask for one half to be chocolate and the other white sugar icing.
Because of its unusual, rich intense sweetness, it became a “cookie sensation” in New York, and within months they were being eaten all over the US.
Even its creator, Dominique Ansel, who runs Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York, was surprised at its success, specially with early morning commuters.
One journalist from The Atlantic Wire reported that people would queue in front of the Soho bakery from 6am, waiting for their daily sugar rush. On some days people would stand for two hours to get their cronut.
Why did they stand in that queue? Because Ansel realised that he had to retain its exclusivity and decided to bake only 250 to 300 cronuts a day.
When America falls in love with a new fad, the battles in the Senate, the intrigues in the White House, and the chaos of Obamacare seem to dwindle away in its sugary wake.
For a few weeks, these treats were the “next big thing” and the followers of fads and fashion had to be see nibbling on a cronut. There were rumours that the confection was being resold at eight times the shop price.
Even The Huffington Post, the most haughty of newspapers, commented that some people in the queue bought cronuts with the intention of selling them on.
Thus evolved a cronut “black market”. People bought the cronuts at $5 and sold them for a hefty profit to the rich and lazy who would rather die than be seen standing in queue outside a bakery. These people were quite happy to pay $40 for a cronut, just so they could be seen displaying the gourmet treat.
With all that media attention focused on the cronut, savvy journalists started write amusing lighthearted columns about it. Jenn Harris at the Los Angeles Times bemoaned the cookie wars with her headline “LA Pastry chefs, save us from Cronut fever envy”.
Over in London, The Guardian’s Katy Salter asked: “Short of hopping on a plane to JFK, how can we get our hands on a cronut in Britain?”
Even Ansel, the baker who caused the pastry rumpus, was taken aback by the impact of his cookie. “We've had people come from Australia, Brazil, Singapore, Berlin, the Philippines, even Kenya, and they were wearing T-shirts with the logo “We are a proud following of cronutphiles”.
The craze has also made its mark in London’s hoity-toity Bloomsbury, where the “cronut is beautifully presented on a slate board. It has the fried flavour of a doughnut, and all the butter of a croissant. The lemon cream inside lightens the whole thing,” says Amy, a cronut convert at Wild & Wood coffee shop.
Who knows how long the cronut phase will last, but right now it is being enjoyed all over the world.
So, to taste a cronut for yourself, do the rounds of your coffee shops and cafés, but be ready for a sugar rush that will make you tingle and don’t even think of getting on the scale after you have tucked into them.
As the saying goes: “A minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.”