Everything you ever wanted to know about cronuts

This is a cronut. Photo via Flickr

What is a cronut?
A cronut™ is a pastry that is half croissant, half doughnut. It was developed by Dominique Ansel at his eponymous bakery in Manhattan last May. And, yes, Ansel actually trademarked the name.

Why should you care about this pastry?
That, dear reader, is a hard question. You see, this pastry has spawned a worldwide mania. Somehow, the deep-fried grease of a doughnut combined with the buttery interior of a croissant incites line-ups, early sell-outs and an oft-diminishing limit per person (it now stands at two). But this relatively benign demand has taken a sinister turn with the development of a black market. Cronut scalpers are selling the pastry on Craigslist for $40 a pop, well-heeled fanatics are paying people to wait in line at the bakery, and this site will deliver 20 cronuts for a mere $3,000.

Why has this happened?
We don’t really know. We suspect it says something about human nature and the theory behind supply and demand. We also think cronuts sound a little gross.

I heard a rumour that cronuts exist in Montreal. Can I taste one here?
Only if you happened to be at the downtown location of Café Myriade one fateful day last month. Myriade’s doughnut supplier, les Beignes Saint Donut, seems to have been the first in town to jump on the cronut bandwagon. Via Facebook message, Saint Donut owner Rachel Corber confirmed that she delivered a batch to Myriade and wrote, “I’m currently working in a space that makes working with dough more than a little difficult (humidity), but I do plan on making them again soon, I hope!” So blame our shitty weather.

I thought I read somewhere that Cantor has them!
If you’ve Googled “cronut Montreal,” you may have found this comment on a Time article insisting that “croissant doughnuts” have been in Montreal for 20 years at Cantor. Shockingly enough, this Internet commenter was wrong. Cantor gave us a curt “no” when we asked. A baker at Olivier Potier quickly dashed our hopes, too.

Our last hope was that corporate Canada had become aware of the trend, so we called Tim Hortons’ headquarters. “Who is that?” said one employee, upon hearing the cronut’s name. She then transferred us to research and development, where our call went unreturned.■