Remember the cake pop?
In 2006, you probably thought it was a passing fancy, a faddish combination of cake and lollipop that had quickly disappeared into the netherworld of baby-shower catering. In fact, it was a canary in a coal mine for the far more powerful Cronut, a croissant-doughnut hybrid that, a year after its birth in a SoHo bakery, still draws a line of more than a hundred people every day and sells out by 10 a.m.
The Internet-driven fame of the Cronut has galvanized bakers and pastry chefs in other cities to replicate it; versions have been spotted in Scandinavia, Australia and Taiwan. Cynics (and the busy lawyers for Dominique Ansel, the pastry chef who trademarked the name internationally) see in this a flood of copycat get-rich-quick schemes.
But like major shifts in art, technology or fashion, it also represents an outpouring of creative energy that could change the genre forever. Smart bakers are abandoning the croissant-doughnut formula and examining their own pastry cases with a speculative eye. The race to invent the next big thing in hybrid desserts is on, and it is fierce.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: New York Times
