It is now the most coveted pastry in Paris. The crookie, a croissant filled with cookie dough created in 2022 by Parisian baker-pastry chef Stéphane Louvard, is now enjoying international success thanks to social networks. We can now find variations of it in the most trendy capitals on the planet, in Brussels, New York, Tel Aviv and even Singapore…
After the buzz generated by the publication of two videos, on Instagram then on TikTok, Parisians and tourists are snapping up the cookie of Maison Louvard, a bistro-bakery in the 9th arrondissement.
“We saw hundreds of people arriving, smartphones in hand”
It all starts in December 2022, with a video from the Instagram account “The Ultimate Guide”, specialized in Parisian restaurants, which highlights this recipe. “It was not a flagship product but something that the regulars liked more,” explains Stéphane Louvard in the workshop of his bakery, surrounded by his employees busy spreading the cookie dough into croissants. “And then, following the video, we started selling 150, 200 per day.”
The real turning point takes place in February 2023, when the influencer Johan Papz takes the stage on TikTok biting into the pastry with a satisfied air. In the weeks that followed, Maison Louvard was stormed. “We saw hundreds of people arrive, most of them young women between 18 and 25 years old, smartphones in hand to take photos with them,” says Stéphane Louvard, who says that production increased to between 1,000 and 1,600 croookies per day.
Crookie, cronut, New York roll…
The high-calorie cake is then imitated by bakers from all over the world who are masters in the art of showcasing their creations and their brand by surfing on the network codes which encourage the staging of consumption. So a video of pastry chef Amaury Guichon giving a demonstration of his own cookie recipe has had almost nine million views on TikTok since March 4.
This is not the first time that a pastry has caused such a stir. The comparison is regularly made with the cronut (mixture of croissant and donut) of Dominique Ansel, a French pastry chef based in New York, who pushed New Yorkers to sleep in front of his establishment in order to obtain it in 2013.
And in 2022, the New York roll, a mixture of croissant and bombolone (an Italian pastry), is causing one of the biggest frenzies. Videos featuring the cake quickly accumulate hundreds of millions of views on TikTok, whetting the appetites of influencers in search of audiences and content.
“The pastry stars have now completely mastered these codes”
Since the 1990s, pastry chefs have learned to take advantage of new communication tools. “Pierre Hermé was the first to offer another pastry, borrowing from haute couture his notions of collection, of limited editions, with artistic communication,” explains Nathalie Louisgrand, teacher-researcher specializing in French gastronomy and its developments in Grenoble Ecole de Management, in eastern France.
But it’s social media, alongside big TV hits like the show The best pastry chef (launched in 2012 in France), which fostered this interest in this part of gastronomy, which had long remained minor. “Pastry lends itself perfectly to communication through images which takes precedence on networks: we enjoy the colors in advance, we can imagine the texture, and it worked so well that we ended up finding it again everywhere on the Web,” adds the expert.
“The stars of pastry have now completely mastered these codes,” concludes Nathalie Louisgrand, citing chefs Cyril Lignac or Nina Métayer and especially Cédric Grolet, “who has perfectly understood the usefulness of influencers, images of crowds rushing to taste rare, ephemeral creations, like giant word of mouth.”