Dominique Ansel's Cronut - released in 2013 - was likely the spark of the pastry mashup that continues to proliferate at bakeries around the world, but the roots go back a bit further. In 1996, NYC pastry chef Maury Rubin created a pretzel croissant that predates the Cronut by more than a decade. However, the rise of the internet made the Cronut an overnight global sensation. Now you can find a slew of crossovers like crookies, brookies, and more at almost any bakery. The New York Times Style Magazine takes a deeper look at the trend through the lens of NYC bakeries (gift link).
The base of many of the mashups is the croissant, because "it easily lends itself to visually dramatic reconfigurations" and, I suspect, because it commands a high starting price point. In addition to the Cronut, croissants have been transformed into everything from crookies (chocolate chip cookie + croissant) to a princess-cake croissant (wrapped in frangipane and topped with mascarpone whipped cream). Many of the new mashups were created by out-of-work pastry chefs during the pandemic, when many pivoted to pop-ups they ran out of their homes and were looking for a way to create excitement.
It has been twelve years since the Cronut debuted, which kind of surprised me, because I still think of it as a new-ish item. More than a decade later, the mashup trend is hotter than ever, so this is a concept with staying power. It makes you wonder: how many more unique items can be created? But by moving beyond French-based pastries into items from diverse cultures, the sky's the limit for these crossover pastries.