Is the 'Crookie' the Next 'Cronut'?
Just when you thought the world of pastry concoctions could not get any better - after spending weeks reading about or, more likely, drooling over the croissant-doughnut hybrid known as the cronut - another pastry chef has outdone himself.
The latest in the pastry wars comes courtesy of our neighbors to the north, Canada, and, more specifically, a café owner in Toronto who created the crookie, a croissant infused with Oreo cookies.
The sweet concoction - made by stuffing croissant dough with crushed Oreos - was created on somewhat of a dare by Olivier Jansen-Reynaud, owner of the Clafouti Patisserie et Café.
A weekly magazine in Toronto challenged pastry chefs there to come up with a treat that could rival the cronut, the creation of New York-based pastry chef Dominique Ansel that has people waiting in line for hours and copycats trying to recreate its success.
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Jansen-Reynaud saw how much his two sons, ages 8 and 11, loved Oreo cookies and, voila, the crookie was born.
"It sort of happened by happenstance," Kyle Marsh, the baker at Clafouti who makes the crookies daily, told ABCNews.com. "But what we created has been very well-received."
So well-received, in fact, that the café, which just celebrated its 10 th anniversary, is already fielding calls from customers asking the bakery to reserve a crookie for them and placing large orders for the weekend.
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Customers, according to Marsh, are also picking up the $2.70 treat throughout the day, not just at breakfast, when most would have their croissant.
"We cut them into segments if they ask us to, because they're quite large and sweet," he said. "Some people are dipping them into milk, just like an Oreo."
Marsh said the secret to the crookie's deliciousness is putting the crushed Oreos inside the croissant dough, not just on top.
"We freeze and crumble the Oreos and then start with our croissant dough," he said. "When we roll out the croissant dough, we put that [Oreos] in as a filling and then proof the croissant so that it rises."
"The cookies are, like, inside a croissant pocket," Marsh said.
The café had been selling about one dozen crookies per day during the week they've been on the menu, but the orders have been rising as word-of-mouth and media attention spreads, exactly what happened to the Dominique Ansel's cronut.
"We're hoping so," Marsh said of whether the crookie, like the cronut, will inspire hours-long waits and bidding wars.