PARIS - A bemused Paris bakery owner has been besieged by smartphone-wielding youngsters over the past year, keen to snap themselves with the latest pastry craze: the crookie.
A croissant filled with cookie dough might sound like a fistful of heart attack, but everyone knows it's going to be tasty, even when all they've seen is a viral TikTok video.
The crookie was invented by Parisian pastry chef Stephane Louvard in 2022.
It was "just something for regulars", he said, until a video by Instagram account "The Ultimate Guide", which specialises in Paris restaurants, drove sales up to 150-200 per day.
Then in early 2023, TikTok influencer Johan Papz filmed himself taking a satisfying bite into one of Louvard's crookies, and things went crazy.
"We had hundreds of people coming, most of them young women between 18- and 25-years-old, smartphones in hand to take photos with them," Louvard told AFP in his kitchen as workers rushed to spread cookie dough into croissants.
In the weeks that followed, the queue never seemed to diminish in front of the bakery. Production is now between 1,000 and 1,600 crookies per day and Louvard has had to hire two extra workers.
He is pleased, but somewhat bemused, over the craze.
"I mean, it's a bit insane," he said.
"At some point you have to stop. It's just some cookie in a croissant, it's not some revolutionary invention."
Thanks to TikTok, Maison Louvard now has imitators around the world, with crookies spotted in Brussels, New York, Tel Aviv and Singapore.
Louvard has no interest in filing a patent, however.
"What for? To find myself in court with half the planet?" he said.
It is not the first pastry craze to tickle the world's taste buds.
In 2013, New Yorkers slept on the pavement outside Dominique Ansel's bakery after he invented the cronut -- half-croissant, half-donut.
In 2022, the New York Roll, a mixture of croissant and bombolone (an Italian pastry) turned into a frenzy, with videos featuring the cake accumulating hundreds of millions of views on TikTok, driving a hunt for more baked crazes. - AFP