There may be nothing as prototypically Parisian as a croissant, but there's a new portmanteau pastry in town called the 'crookie': a mashup of the croissant and the all-American chocolate chip cookie.
The idea, according to inventor Stéphane Louvard of Maison Louvard on Rue de Châteaudun, popped into his head one morning after he'd baked a batch of traditional croissants. "I thought to myself… you know what? Let's have some fun."
He split the croissants in half and stuffed them with chocolate chip cookie dough, rebaking them just enough so that the cookie set. They were a modest hit, with about 100 to 150 sold each day, until a TikTok influencer got wind of them in February 2024. Ever since, Louvard has been working overtime to keep up with the demand, fashioning 1,500 crookies a day - and 2,000 on Saturdays.
That's good news for his business. The top-quality ingredients, know-how and time that go into each crookie contribute to its price of €5.90 ($6.45), more than triple that of a regular Parisian croissant. "It's the price of a cookie plus a croissant," said Louvard. And it's clearly not putting customer's off.
Each crookie begins with a croissant made in-house at Louvard's boulangerie' The dough takes three days to complete, allowing ample time for it to ferment and develop its fullest, richest flavour. Once baked, the croissants are left to age for just a few hours, long enough - Louvard explained to Emily Monaco for an article in BBC Travel - to be neatly sliced down the middle. Filled with 60g of cookie dough and topped with another 40g, they're rebaked for 10 minutes, for an interior impregnated with chocolate that remains gooey long after the crookie has cooled. This is thanks to the chocolate he sources from Xoco Gourmet, a producer cultivating terroir-driven cacao that's roasted for half the time of industry standard and at a temperature 20 percent lower. The resulting chocolate is richly aromatic with no lingering bitterness; the Mayan Red used in the crookie smells like confit fruit and, reports Emily Monaco, tastes like heaven. Thousands more agree with her. Every week.
Feeling hungry yet? If you're lucky, the crookie will be coming to a boulangerie near you too...