The Cronut celebrates its first anniversary on Saturday after a year of hype, hysteria, 13 different flavors and some very long lines. Here, a look back.
May 10, 2013
Pastry chef Dominique Ansel debuts the Cronut, a doughnut-croissant hybrid, at his eponymous Soho bakery. Angels sing. Bloggers cry out.
Mid-May, 2013
Cronut mania strikes the city full-on. People line up for hours before the bakery opens. Ansel reports customers crying and insulting staff when they run out of Cronuts, which they are only making a few hundred of each day.
June 2013
Ansel institutes a two-Cronut-per-customer limit in an attempt to crack down on scalpers, who are reselling the $5 pastry for as much as $100 a pop. “Waiting in line for two Cronuts isn’t a very profitable business,” Ansel says of his scalper crackdown.
June 2013
Cronut knockoffs, with names like the “doissant” and “squat” pop up in bakeries from Midtown to Melbourne.
October 2013
Stacy Hock, a 30-something philanthropist and former IBM exec, pays $14,000 for a dozen Cronuts at City Harvest’s Bid Against Hunger auction.
Aug. 8, 2013
Actress Emma Roberts reportedly tries using her star power to cut in front of the sugar-hungry plebeians waiting for Cronuts, but is refused. Later that night on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” Jimmy presents her with a Cronut on a silver platter.
April 4, 2014
The NYC Health Department shuts down Dominique Ansel Bakery over a “severe” mice infestation. “The pastries are delicious, so I can’t blame the mice,” quips a customer.
April 8, 2014
The bakery reopens after passing a 2 ¹/₂ hour health department inspection.
May 5, 2014
Ansel wins the James Beard award for best pastry chef, doesn’t stay out late partying.
May 6, 2014
Ansel wakes up at 5 a.m. (sleeping in from his usual 4 a.m. wake-up call!) to make more Cronuts.
Now: The New Cronut
Ansel’s latest creation, the Waffle Affogato, goes on sale Friday. A riff on an Italian affogato, it features vanilla ice cream molded into a waffle shape drenched in maple syrup and hot espresso. “It’s an ice cream float; it’s a sloshy sundae; it’s a milkshake,” says Ansel.