Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Beyond the Cronut – the Beachy Cream Spin

Have you heard about the latest dessert craze, the Cronut?  It’s a hybrid croissant and doughnut filled with cream and glazed.  It started a few weeks ago at Dominique Ansel’s wonderful bakery on Spring Street in New York City, and people are camping out in line to get the limited quantity he makes each day.  It’s been so popular there’s reportedly a black market for them with some selling for $50 - $100.  That sounds absurd, but I guess those New Yorkers are pretty serious about scoring their desserts.

This got me thinking (often a dangerous exercise – in fact whenever I say to Beth, “I’ve got an idea”, her first response is always, “Oh no, now what?”) But I thought, what if we made some of our ice cream sandwiches using Cronuts instead of cookies? That started my mouth watering, so my pal Julie (who was at the store baking cookies with me today) and I decided to go on a filed trip and look for them.  We’d heard a rumor that DK’s Donuts on 16th and Santa Monica Blvd had them, so we jumped in the car and headed over there.

DK’s had about a half a dozen different types including a Maple Bacon Glazed that we just had to try (delicious), but we ended up choosing the cinnamon sugar coated one with no filling – a “plain” Cronut if you will – to take back to Beachy Cream to experiment with.  We sliced it in half and had a discussion about what ice cream to pair with it.  We decided that just about any flavor would work, but I liked the idea of our Coffee Toffee ice cream because it seemed kind of “breakfasty” to me.

The pairing was amazing.  The Cronut was crispy on the outside with soft flaky layers inside, and the cold and creamy Coffee Toffee Ice Cream was just perfect oozing out the sides as we bit into it.

“OMG!”,  said everyone who tried it. “You have to make these”!

So now I’m working to find the best croissant dough maker in Los Angeles (because, frankly, do I really want to make the pastry from scratch?).  I think I’ve tracked her down.  I’ll be heating up some oil in a couple of days to try these out.  Stay tuned, or just look for the line down the street when we start serving these up fresh with our ice cream.