Cruffins, Cubes and Cookie Croissants: Pastry Trends and Where to Find Them

For years, I’ve been fascinated by the cruffin, aka croissant dough shaped like a muffin. The tall, flaky-crispy shell is filled with a flavored pastry cream through its core that pokes out of the top like frosting on a cupcake, and is often coated in chocolate, sugar or other toppings.

I had my first cruffin around the time the now-shuttered Mr. Holmes Bakehouse popularized the item in San Francisco in 2017. My bread school instructors loved to make fun of the trendy pastry, saying it was just a taller morning bun — and a structurally unstable one, at that.

Rumor had it that the only reason there was filling in the cruffin was because without the cream center, the tall, thin pastry might collapse under its own weight. We laughed because it felt like a gimmick and not a true display of “traditional pastry” — whatever that means.

Over the years, the once-trendy cruffin became a staple on bakery menus across the country, and it’s been interesting to watch its progress from trend to tradition.

I don’t think the morning bun was endangered and in need of a rebrand, but when a baker can take something familiar and make it feel just different enough, it creates an exciting opportunity to rediscover what we love about pastry.
As a culinary anthropologist, I am fascinated by how food trends and traditions work. The recipes or customs that we consider time-honored and never-changing tend to be a lot more flexible than we think.

My Nonna Gloria’s sugo (an Italian-style meat sauce for pasta) comes to mind. Even with its deep roots, it’s not stuck in the past. My family is known to tweak the sugo recipe to our own tastes whenever we make it. I think Nonna probably did the same. The repetition ingrains it in our identity, while each cousin’s little touches keep the tradition fresh and relevant so that it can live on through us.

When I see a cruffin on a menu today, I think it’s more of a considered choice. It doesn’t carry the same history as your grandmother’s recipes, but it’s also no longer the trendy thing to bake. Cruffins have made their way to the classics shelf with the likes of chocolate croissants, danishes and morning buns.

Now, a new crop of trendy pastries can be found in Denver. If you’re looking for the next must-try viral croissant, you’re in luck. Whether it’s a roulette, a cube or a crown, we’ve got them all. These unique shapes are technically challenging to bake. But more interesting than what a baker is capable of making, I think, is what they choose to put into their pastry case day after day.
La Fillette, which moved into a new, bigger space in the Montclair neighborhood last year, has forgone the cruffin nickname for the more elegant croissant muffin. It’s even adapted the shape to a more ambitious croissant cylinder with a perfectly flat top, and it rotates through inventive flavors. In March, it served a mango and Chamoy version filled with mango crèmeux and topped with a lime whipped ganache, chamoy pate de fruit, lime fluid gel and Tajín. This month, the seasonal recipe is a banana cream pie croissant muffin.

Another La Fillette favorite is the chocolate croissant French toast. Owner Keturah Fleming says the griddled croissants with warm syrup and white chocolate whipped ganache have been a popular choice for years, and she assures that it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

The croissant cube is an exciting and innovative viral pastry that can be found locally at Black Box Bakery inside Edgewater Public Market in a variety of rotating flavors such as cherry almond, pistachio and peach pie. Here, even the classics on the menu are reinvented. “The core to our brand and who we are as bakers is constant experimentation,” notes co-owner Arielle Israel. The savory selection at Black Box proves to be innovative, too, with options like the Cheez-It Choco Danish and the Reuben croissant.
Cookie croissants have been making their way around the internet recently, but Moon Raccoon, which sets up shop at farmers' markets and other pop-up events, was ahead of this trend. It has been putting brownies in its whole-grain croissant dough for years. “Sometimes trendy isn't new; it's just new to a viewer,” notes co-owner Kate Lange.

Another longstanding Moon Racoon staple is the Space Snickers, a simple meringue cookie filled with chocolate and peanuts that is baked to create a crunchy outside and gooey center. “They came about because we had too many leftover egg whites from making other fillings and needed a way to use them,” Lange explains. “Someone from our kitchen said they seemed like astronaut food the first time we made them, and this inspired the name. They are now one of our most popular items and happen to be gluten-free.”

There’s a place for both trends and classics in our pastry cases. Some connect us to the techniques making their way across the baking world; others — the ones we find ourselves baking time and time again — tell customers more about who we are as bakers as we highlight flavors and stories that we love to share.

Make sure to try both at your next bakery outing, and don’t overlook what may feel ordinary. The pastry case is an invitation to taste the recipes that excite us, and the traditions that make us who we are.