For the most tantalizing twist on a campfire classic, leave it to avante-garde gourmet pastry chef Dominique Ansel, of the eponymous now world-renowned Dominique Ansel Bakery in NewYork City, to make the bourgeois classic S’mores a chic new snack.
The celebrated bakery, of newfound cronut fame, debuted the hot but cool new frozen S’mores dessert on July 13 in honor of their acclaimed cronut’s two-month anniversary.
“Ansel’s new frozen s’mores will consist of cold vanilla ice cream coated in a crispy chocolate wafer and a layer of fresh marshmallow, speared with an applewood-smoked willow branch and torched to order, adding a crème brûlée-style crunch to the outermost layer.”
“Depending on your level of commitment to dessert,you may want to drop whatever you’re doing and start lining up right now,” Mashable quipped. “Dominique Ansel’s new frozen s’mores, which remain nameless as of Friday morning, will consist of cold vanilla ice cream coated in a crispy chocolate wafer and a layer of fresh marshmallow. The dreamy confection is then speared with an applewood-smoked willow branch and torched to order, adding a crème brûlée-style crunch to the outermost layer.”
Meanwhile, their popular, if not confounding, cronut is still making headlines. “Made with a laminated dough similar to a croissant, the cronut is proofed, then fried in grapeseed oil, rolled in sugar, filled with cream, and topped with glaze,” a process that the bakery says can take up to three days. Each month has its own special cronut flavor to lust after, beginning with its debut Rose Vanilla in May, Lemon Maple for June, and a delicious-sounding Blackberry Cronut for July.
Agile chef Ansel has been named one of the “Top 10 Pastry Chefs in the United States” by Dessert Professional Magazine in 2009, as well as chosen by Time Out New York as one of the city’s “Top Ten Pastry Chefs You Need to Know” in 2010. Inspired by his father, according to his biography, Parisian-born Dominique Ansel is said to have began his formal culinary training at the age of sixteen, then “taking a break for compulsory military training and later returning to joining the ranks of the legendary French pastry institution, Fauchon. At Fauchon, Dominique spent 7 years traveling the world to open shops in places ranging from Egypt to Russia to Kuwait.”
Has the sought-after cronut made its way to to your metropolis yet, or have you sampled the new frozen S’mores? Are these hot new foodie trends deserving of all of the hype? — Casandra Armour
