Croffle, anyone?
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The crossing of the croissant with cookies, donuts and waffles and more is all part of a shake-up of dessert culture. I've always thought of desserts as closer to something like jewellery making or fashion.

This is the Food Chain from the BBC World Service. I'm Ruth Alexander, and this week we're exploring the popularity of dessert cafes and their ever more over-the-top offerings. Stuff oozing out of it, stuff pouring on top of it, something extraordinarily indulgent. We want to know what people are searching for when they're going out for pudding. We're serving a happy product.

Because, you know, whether it's a cheesecake or an ice cream or whether it's chocolate, you know, all of these products make people happy. And why it's such a competitive business to be in. People eat with their eyes. It's not like you're just slapping a steak on a plate. This is art.

You're hearing the hustle and bustle of Manchester's famous Curry Mile here in the north-west of England. It's a place people come to for a slap-up South Asian meal, and I'm sure lots of the people walking past me are going to do exactly that. But increasingly, people are paying the bill and then hopping over the road to a dessert cafe. And that is why I and producer Romela Duskup have to find ourselves outside this one. Heavenly desserts, it says.

There's a marble exterior. Roses adorning the walls inside. This looks like the kind of place where we can treat ourselves. Shall we? Indeed. Hello. Hi, welcome to Heavenly Desserts. Table for two? Yes, please. We should go to the restaurant. Thank you, will do. Oh, the smell. I smell sugar. I smell sweet things.

Thank you very much. We're in a booth with pink seats. It's like an American ice cream parlour. It's got that kind of feel. Or a diner, but it's all pink. It's a good start, isn't it? Right, the menu, let's dive in.

While we take in the extensive menu, let's hear from Yusuf Aslam, one of the managing directors and co-founders of the business, which has more than 50 outlets around the UK, one in Canada and more on the way in Germany, India and Pakistan. The story for us certainly goes back way back to 2008, when after lots of research, looking at various trends in terms of what was happening over the seas, we found that the business was doing well.

Both over in the States and also in Europe, we found that the ice cream parlour concept was something that was trending. And quite naturally, just knowing the food and beverage industry, we knew that this was going to be something that was going to become a trend here in the UK. And we wanted to be at the forefront of that.

And what was it like getting it off the ground in 2008 in the wake of a global financial crisis? Difficult, because not only were we coming out of this financial crisis, let's face it, this was a concept that was really unknown. To have an outlet which is open seven days a week, 365 days a year, from midday all the way up until midnight, that served just a wide array of desserts on the menu. Even if you go to many restaurants today,

The dessert menu is always the one that's lacking and there's particular focus that's paid to the starters and the main courses. That's where we really kind of came in to fulfil that gap because we then all of a sudden became a venue that you could go to as a secondary part to your evening, which became part of the experience. It's just after half past seven in the evening and it's quite busy. It's quite a mixed crowd. It's kind of all ages. Who doesn't like sugar?

I like it. It's family-friendly. Nice desserts. I have three boys, they have two girls. They are visiting. And where are you visiting from? Jordan. Do you have places like this in Jordan? In Jordan? Yeah, we have, yeah, we have.

Is this something you tend to do, go out for dessert? Definitely. Ice cream is very popular in Jordan. Can I ask what you ordered? So we ordered to share from everything a little bit, I guess. We got waffles, we got croffles. As I said, a croffle is a croissant-waffle hybrid. Waffle is popular.

So what have you ordered? This coffee. Yeah. This coffee is really, really nice and we really like it. What have you got there? What have you got there? She got cookie dough and she really likes it. She's enjoying it. It's nice. So why have you come here? Whenever we come to Innsmouth Road, we always come here for dessert, so we like it. Just to interact with others and just spend time rather than just being inside all the time and ordering food inside. Mm.

Well, we come here because the vibes are nice, it's got nice decorations. Yeah, it's quite popular. Pomegranate mojito, I don't know if that's how you say it, but... Mojito? Yeah. I like lemonades and it reminds me of summer, it tastes good too. I'm always busy and go out as a family with the whole family, but today I decided to go out with only Isra. Father-daughter time, like together. She loves it.

For me, actually, I'm trying to keep desserts under control, but to make her happy, I just came here. We're serving a happy product because, you know, whether it's a cheesecake or an ice cream or whether it's chocolate, you know, all of these products make people happy. And over the years, we've also become this social evening hub.

The choices are very limited for consumers to socialise in after hours. So after hours in this context is like post 6, 7pm because all the coffee shops are shut. Over the last sort of five to seven years, we're starting to see a big decrease in drinking culture.

A lot of the South Asian communities, a lot of the Arab communities in the UK, predominantly the Muslim customer base who, you know, typically due to faith, don't socialise around alcohol. We were certainly a massive attraction for them particular communities.

Why does dessert make good business? The obvious thing that sticks out is that the profit margin's involved. So the ingredients at procurement level are low cost because we're not dealing with oils, for example, or fats, which are constantly having increases and fluctuations in pricing. So it's a very stable kind of procurement process. If you compare it to, say, the price of poultry or the price of lamb or beef, for example, or fish even, the ingredients list in a lot of other restaurants and cafes, etc.,

The dessert cafe is still a very, very high profit margin industry. And that's one thing, you know, compared to a typical restaurant, we only serve one course. So that makes it much more of an efficient business to operate. And of course, you know, there's a lot less preparation involved compared to a full fledged sort of restaurant operation. And that's because you're really assembling items into a dish. You're not having to saute this and grill that and get the timing just right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Back in the dessert restaurant, I spot a customer who's ordered something I'd had my eye on, a glazed cornflake tart which looked delightfully syrupy. I've had really nice cornflake tarts and I've had some bad ones and this is kind of mediocre. Oh, what a shame. It's a disappointment. The presentation's really on point. I was really happy and I was like, oh great, it looks nice. I mean, the taste isn't... It's probably like a six out of ten. Why do you enjoy coming out for dessert?

It's just a way of escaping life, isn't it, really? You know, you can get a takeaway or whatever, that's fine, but I think just the ambience, depending on obviously what day it is in the week, sometimes when you just want to get out. So I think a lot of people wouldn't really do it for the food. I mean, those days have gone, I'm sorry, where it was all about the food. It's now about the environment, aesthetically what it looks like, how it makes you feel. I mean, I'm a bit disappointed about this, but I'm not going to cry tonight.

Are you guys ready to order? Yes, we are. What would you guys like? Right, to begin, we thought we would warm up with a dark chocolate shot and a milk chocolate and pistachio shot. Moving on to grow up the plant pot.

A cheesecake in a plant pot? I mean, why not? Weird and wonderful dessert cafe concoctions have had people queuing in the street in Paris, New York and Dubai, where Kim Britto, a food blogger from Where My Food At, makes it her business to keep across the food trends spreading on social media. She says the dessert cafe scene in Dubai started around four years ago with an Australian import that had already made it big in the US, the Freak Shake.

So freak shakes are basically these extravagant milkshakes that honestly it's not humanly possible for one person to consume. It's basically a milkshake with like a lot of toppings on it. There's toppings outside the milkshake as well. There's a huge piece of cake that they put on top of it with whipped cream on top. People queued around the block for it and then they were on to the next big thing. There has been this new trend of a crookie.

It's basically a hybrid between a croissant and a cookie. Was it good? Because I'm just looking at a picture of one now and it looks pretty gross to me. If you do it right, it tastes really good. Imagine cookie dough in between a croissant. It's not too sweet. Yeah. It sounds over the top, but it's good. It does. It is good. Yeah. I'll tell you that the freak shakes...

Definitely did not sit right with me. It's not possible for one or even two people to finish one freak shake. So that was too indulgent. But the cookie, I'll give them credit. It was good. And what makes an attention grabbing dessert? What makes a dessert go viral? Definitely a big part of it is the aesthetic appeal.

It has to look good, unfortunately, for it to do well, for it to go viral. There are a lot of desserts that I've tried in Dubai that are just simple cheesecakes or simple pound cakes.

that I know taste better than most desserts in Dubai, but I know as well that it will not go viral because it looks so simple. Because from my experience, some of the best restaurants and some of the restaurants that do really well are the ones that have, you know, stuff oozing out of it, stuff pouring on top of it, something extraordinarily indulgent. So it's just if it looks good, you will have people going to try it.

So we've had the freak shake. The crookie is having its moment in the sun. What do you think the next big thing could be? I had seen this one video that went viral in Australia. I'm not sure which part. It was a huge donut and there was a big hole cut into it.

The donut was toasted, so nothing could seep through. And then they made a latte and they poured it over. So when you serve the donut, it's like a coffee cup, but instead of the cup, it's a donut. So you drink your coffee and then you eat your donut. And I think that's brilliant. And I'm just waiting for it to come here because I'm going to post about it. I could see that catching on. If it comes to the UK, I'll try that. Kim Britto. You're listening to The Food Chain from the BBC World Service.

World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed. And in this new series, we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry, following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school only to uncover a world she never expected. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this. Where the hope of spiritual breakthroughs leaves people vulnerable to exploitation. You just get sucked in spiritually.

so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realise. World of Secrets, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

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I'm Ruth Alexander, and this week we're talking about the appeal of the dessert cafe.

You might have noticed them popping up in your neighbourhood in recent years. But actually, they're not an entirely new idea, according to Michael Crandall, food historian and author of the book Sweet Invention, A History of Dessert. One of the interesting things I find is a parallel with the rise of these dessert cafes and the rise of tea rooms, both in the UK, in the US and in France...

sort of in the late 19th century. Because what you have is you have public spaces

that are available to relatively conservative women. And if you look, particularly in the UK, if you look at the dessert cafe menus, they tend to be highly feminine. And by that, I mean, they have frilly desserts. And in general, sweet foods have been associated with femininity, particularly in the West. Not so much, for example, in South Asia, but they certainly have in the West.

And one of the places that women could socialize, could go out in public in the late 19th century, particularly proper, respectable bourgeois women, were in places that served sweets and, of course, tea and coffee and that sort of thing. From the impression that I have with particularly the chains in the UK is that they are attracting South Asian and Middle Eastern clientele.

And that is a relatively more historically more conservative society where, again, these are places where nobody will look twice at you if you spend the afternoon or an evening in a dessert cafe, whereas spending it in a pub would be much more suspect. Right.

While today's dessert cafes remind Michael of times gone by, he says they're also very much a product of today's globalisation. One of the other interesting things that I found, particularly in the British cafes, is that the menus are very non-place specific. In other words, you look at the menus and there's nothing English about them or British about

They're an amalgam of a little bit of France, a little bit of Italy, a little bit of whatever happens to be popular, a little bit of America, of course, and very much representative of this kind of globalized food culture that I think Britain and, of course, the United States and other former British colonies have developed because, of course, immigration and because of a relatively weak national presence in terms of food.

You tend not to find that as much in a place like France or in Austria, for example, which has this dessert culture, right? Although even there these days, you can't get away from American style donuts. You can't get away from cupcakes. So there's something for everyone. There's something for everyone. And because you do not feel alienated by any of it, presumably you can feel a comfort level with it. One of the things I've noticed is that if you look at a menu, often...

Some of the desserts are a bit of a mash-up. So I had, what was it called? Was it a crookie? A crookie is apparently taking Paris by storm. It is a croissant mixed with a chocolate chip cookie. What do the French think?

You know, are they thinking like, what have you done to the croissant? No, you can't. Or is this popular then in Paris? Apparently it is popular and I'm sure there's lots and lots of French folk who are grumbling about it. While the croquis or the croffle or the cruffin, a croissant muffin mashup might sound like an abomination to some,

Michael has an appreciation for the creativity behind these new concoctions. See, I've always thought of desserts as closer to something like jewellery making or fashion than to cooking in some ways. So they very much have historically followed the current fashion, whatever that fashion was. And because of the technical requirements of making this cookie, it's not that different from...

what jewellery makers or furniture makers do, in that is you are constructing something. And it's that artistry, he says, that is key to the trend. The one thing that a lot of these dessert places have, and I think is essential to understand dessert trends today, but also connects to dessert trends in the past, is that they are very visual. And consequently,

Because we're living in this Instagram culture, people will share dessert pictures, especially if they are elaborately constructed in a way that they will simply not share pictures of their boeuf bourguignon. So there is this, again, visually conspicuous and literal consumption there.

That accelerates the speed of these trends and also globalizes them in a way that they simply were not globalized in an earlier era when there was some 20 plus years ago, a global trend of cupcakes. It took about 10 years to get from, you know, New York to Beijing.

When the cronut craze happened, I remember getting a note from a friend of mine who was in Machu Picchu and six months after the cronut was introduced into New York... Sorry, this is a croissant crossed with a donut. This is a croissant crossed with a donut invented by a French pastry chef in New York...

And six months later, it was appearing in Peru. So we'd gone from a 10-year cycle of going around the world to a six-month cycle of going around the world. And I think we're probably down to a three-week cycle. Michael Crundall. Ooh, I think it's coming out now. Ooh, ooh.

Back in the dessert cafe, our order has arrived. You've got the dark chocolate and pistachio shot. I didn't know it was coming with half a cookie. And then the milk chocolate and pistachio shot. Golly. That looks great. You're having that one. Thank you.

She was straight in for the dark chocolate, listener. Straight in. Cheers. Cheers. While Romella and I guzzle our chocolate shots, let's meet Brian Salari. Brian lives in Charleston, South Carolina, the US, where he runs Carmella's Dessert Bar. When I was a child, I just remember, you know, being Italian-American or food-eccentric around any kind of family gathering. Who's Carmella? So Carmella, I'll show you Carmella, actually. Carmella's my grandmother.

Uh-huh. Where she passed a few years back, but her and Tony. I got a wedding picture here of them. Oh, yeah, on the wall there. Yeah. Lovely dress. Yeah. Yeah, very classic. So my parents were very young when they got married, so we lived with my grandparents.

You know, the house that I grew up in, I spent a lot of summers there. It was always a place of solace for me. I put on a lot of weight every summer living with my grandmother. Let's put it that way. There is a lot of food in the house. You know, that food is in my blood. I just had such an incredible interest in the food and in the culture.

So I worked in and out of the restaurant industry, especially here in Charleston for about a decade. And I remember that the one question I would get religiously was, where can we get dessert or where do we go now? And I always used to think to myself, we have a dessert menu. Why don't you want to stay here and enjoy dessert in this restaurant that I'm working in? You know, beautiful restaurant. What I realized is they wanted a different venue. Dessert is supposed to be relaxing.

And you don't want to feel rushed. You don't want to feel like a server's trying to turn the table and get more people in the restaurant. They wanted to chill and talk and slow their evening down. And I thought that that was a great opportunity to fill the void here in Charleston. I'd love to see your desserts in more detail. Would you mind walking me around that counter? So let's take a look here.

We always have to put the allergy list here. So the gluten-free passion fruit panna cotta. That's like a swirl. Yeah, it is good. The mixed berry yuzu tarts. We have our black bottom macaroon. This is the other most famous cake, the chocolate peanut butter cake. Now that's rich. Yeah, it is. That is extremely rich. It's got a chocolate brownie bottom. Mixed berry cake. So this was our spring cake. And then, like I said, we always try to do some type of a fruit cake. We're going to do an orange cake in the summertime.

And those, what are the fruit? Are those strawberries on top? Strawberries and blueberries, yeah, and raspberries. Very elegant. Is the look important?

The look is extreme. People, my mentor, Dennis Raffa, used to always say people eat with their eyes. Look could not be, especially in pastry, could not be more. It's not like you're just slapping a steak on a plate. This is art. We're as much art as we are, you know, science. Here is a very traditional southern cake, the hummingbird cake. As you see, it's got, it's like a banana pineapple spice cake. It's got coconut and cinnamon and walnuts in the inside. We always bring this out in the springtime because it's a very famous cake around Easter.

And then some southern traditions. We've got the key lime pie. We've got a honey lavender cheesecake. Here you go. We have tiramisu cups for the people who want to grab tiramisu and go, which I'm a fan of. There are people who grab and go. They take away. Oh, definitely. I would say half of our business is grab and go. And the other half is I can't finish this and I need a box. So we do box a lot of stuff up.

What's the bestseller? Is there a clear standout bestseller? We have, so in the food category, our bestseller is our cannoli cake. Would you show me the cannoli cake? Absolutely, sure. Cannoli, or cannolo, singular, is basically a pastry shell. It's a shell that's rolled, and then you fill it with the sweetened ricotta cheese.

or mascarpone cheese, but we use ricotta. And then you can top it or dip it. We use chips on the end of ours. People sometimes dip it in chocolate. Sometimes there's fruit inside. There's really a million different ways to do it.

to make a cannoli. And then what we did with that was we have two layers of our very famous vanilla cake and a middle layer of chocolate cake. And so we took the cannoli cream and we used it as the filling and the frosting, and then we drizzled it with chocolate ganache on top and then stuck a cannoli on top of the cake. Wow. I mean, cannoli are a rich treat in themselves. Cannoli cake sounds like... Overkill, but yes, that's what we do. Yeah. LAUGHTER

And what are people looking for when they come to a dessert cafe? I think they're looking for two things. One is obviously high-quality products. The second thing is environment. We're trying to create an environment where people feel relaxed,

casual. We have an outdoor patio that's beautiful so you can sit indoor or outdoor, but you're comfortable and you don't feel rushed. And well, the other thing is the assortment of food we have. So sometimes you go and your ice cream shop has ice cream or we have a lot of places around here just sell cookies or they just sell cupcakes. Well, we try to have a little bit of something for everyone.

Is going out for dessert a recent trend? Or is this something embedded in American culture? No, I think what's happened in the food scene over the last 20 years is that it's expanding, it's growing. People are becoming more interested in good food. And when that happens...

you see things start to get a little more niche-y, right? So you can find a pocket of culinary that maybe hasn't been explored. Places like mine are starting to pop up in kind of mid-sized cities and smaller towns because people's palates are starting to expand.

and people's interest in food has started to expand, so you can dial in their food experience and kind of find a niche for yourself. You know, after the 2008 banking crisis, what people were doing was they were eating at home and...

They still wanted to go out, though. They still wanted to be a part of the community. They still wanted to see friends or meet new people. And what they were doing was going out just for dessert. Today, Brian's dessert bar is open 8am to midnight, catering for all ages, with families seated next to bachelorette parties. I wonder whether he feels a pressure to always be coming up with something new, something better, something bigger. I do. One of the things that I've noticed with some places...

So, you know, restaurants around here, they were the top of the top, the best of the best on everyone's minds and lips. And, you know, 10 or 15 years later, they've never changed the menu and no one even talks about them anymore. But I'm just wondering, because people come in with high expectations. You know, they've seen stuff on social media and they come in and they want to be like they want something sensational. Can customers be particularly picky or exacting what they want?

They sure can, and these review sites have given them an outlet to expound on their personal tastes. But what we do here is we make the things the best that we can do for ourselves. And then, of course, the customer needs to decide. You know, you can't take it personal, and that's the trouble with...

with probably a lot of people like myself is I take this business personal. It's a piece of who I am. Like it literally is, these are memories from childhood.

And these are all the greatest things that I'm capable of. So when people get nitpicky, it can burn. It certainly burned a lot in the beginning, but I've kind of grown immune to it over the years and just realised that, you know what, not everyone shares my taste, and that's OK. Brian Solari in Charleston. Meanwhile in Manchester, there's been a development. Romella, where's your spoon? Why have you stopped eating? I can't eat anymore. It's all too sweet. No!

You've barely touched your plump pot. Yeah, no, I'm so sorry. You're not trying hard enough. Listener, she took it home for her children. Do you go out for dessert? We'd love to hear about the sweetest treats you've tried. You can email thefoodchain at bbc.co.uk. From me and the rest of the team, Rumela Dasgupta and Beatrice Pickup, thanks for listening and join us again next week. When you're young, it feels like anything is possible.

Maybe you're a little hot-headed, but your optimism lifts you up. And your righteous fury can be rocket fuel, propelling you to fight for what's right. You might make choices that put you in danger. You might even make history. I'm Nicola Coughlan. This is History's Youngest Heroes. Rebellion.

Risk and the radical power of youth. Being young, maybe she didn't think too much. She thought, right, I'll just do it. She thought about others rather than herself. 12 stories of extraordinary young people from across history. There's a real sense of urgency in them. That resistance has to be mounted, it has to be mounted now. Including a young man called Nelson Mandela.

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A Soviet naval officer whose extraordinary courage helped save the world from nuclear catastrophe. Well, sticking to your guns on that submarine in that heat, that take guts. That really takes guts. History made by young people. Follow History's Youngest Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.

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