Dominique Ansel’s Baking Career Highlights

Dominique Ansel has a series of bakeries selling his signature confections in the United States and around the world.

1. 1. Dominique Ansel Bakery (New York City): Opened in 2011 in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, this was Chef Dominique’s flagship store. This is where his infamous Cronut® caught the attention of pastry-lovers from the world over.
2. 2. Dominique Ansel Workshop: Previously located in New York’s West Village neighborhood and named Dominique Ansel Kitchen, the Dominique Ansel Workshop is a bakery and “croissant counter” that now serves up many of Chef Dominique’s classic creations.
3. 3. Dang Wen Li by Dominique Ansel: Opened in January 2020 in Harbour City, Hong Kong, this bakery’s namesake is a reference to “Dominique” in Cantonese. This bakery was created as a capsule collection exclusively for Hong Kong, featuring desserts that could only be found at that location.

Dominique makes a number of other classic desserts, such as pastry cream, fruit tarts, sponge cakes, swiss meringue, chocolate cake, croissants, and French butter cakes (also known as madeleines). However, his inventive spins on classic treats have made him famous the world over and spawned countless imitators. Here are some of his most famous baked creations.

1. 1. The Cronut®: The Cronut® is Chef Dominique’s signature croissant-donut hybrid pastry that first launched at his eponymous bakery in New York in May 2013, soon becoming the world’s first-ever viral pastry. In its first year, the Cronut® was named one of the “25 Best Inventions of 2013” by Time Magazine.
2. 2. The Cookie Shot: The Chocolate Chip Cookie Shot is another one of Dominique’s plays on an iconic American dessert. Chef Dominique shapes the cookie like a shot glass, lining it with chocolate to seal it, and filling the “glass” with ice-cold, local milk that’s infused with Tahitian vanilla beans. You take a sip of the milk, bite off the warm cookie, and repeat until the whole dessert disappears.
3. 3. The Frozen S’more: This American nostalgia-inspired dessert consists of vanilla ice cream and a chocolate wafer enveloped in honey-sweetened meringue and served on a smoked applewood branch. The meringue is torched to order, allowing snackers to taste the freshly caramelized marshmallow against the chilled ice cream center.
4. 4. The Blossoming Hot Chocolate: Inspired by the blooming chrysanthemum tea leaves in hot water, Chef Dominique developed this dish for his former bakery in Japan, where it was a hit with patrons who loved how it mimicked the opening of cherry blossoms, with its marshmallow petals unraveling in the hot chocolate to reveal a beautiful flower.
5. 5. The Pop Fleur: This dessert is an elevated take on a Push-Pop, where frozen yogurt flavored like wakamomo (a local Japanese fruit that tastes like “peach mixed with lychee”) is pushed through a specially designed lid that mimics a piping tip used for piping rosettes of icing on cakes.

Chef Dominique has published two cookbooks during his tenure as a baker, revealing his trade secrets and most popular recipes to home bakers the world over.

• Dominique Ansel: The Secret Recipes (2014): Dominique’s first cookbook contains a number of tasty recipes and accompanying stories. The recipes get more difficult as the book progresses, starting with beginner desserts such as chocolate pecan cookies and hot chocolate, and moving onto more advanced recipes like the Cronut®.
• Everyone Can Bake: Simple Recipes to Master and Mix (2020): This cookbook is devoted to the quintessential building blocks of many classic desserts, like the vanilla sable tart shell, as well as ideas for mixing ingredients, such as rosemary chocolate brownies.

Dominique Ansel has earned a number of awards and accolades for his many culinary accomplishments, including the following:

1. 1. Best New Bakery Award: Shortly after opening, Dominique’s first bakery quickly became a local success and earned Time Out New York’s Best New Bakery Award in 2012 (as well as the title of Zagat’s highest ranked bakery in the city).
2. 2. Best Bakery in New York: In an annual reader-voted search in 2012, restaurant guide Metromix declared Chef Dominique the winner as the best bakery in New York.
3. 3. James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef: In 2014, Chef Dominique earned one of the culinary world’s most prestigious honors, a James Beard Award, for his work as one of the most talented chefs in the nation.
4. 4. Most Innovative People Under 40: In 2014, Dominique Ansel was dubbed one of the most innovative people under 40 by Business Insider for his Cronut invention, as well as his other dessert creations.
5. 5. 50 Most Influential French People in the World: Dominique Ansel was named in Vanity Fair’s 2014 list of the “50 Most Influential People in the World” for using his French roots to springboard the cuisine even further into the mainstream.
6. 6. l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole Award: Chef Dominique was given France’s second-highest honor in 2015 for his continuous promotion of French culture and cuisine.
   
7. 7. World’s Best Pastry Chef: The World’s 50 Best Restaurants awarded Chef Dominique World’s Best Pastry Chef in 2017 for his rich and inventive creations.
   

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