The combination of a croissant with a chocolate chip cookie—better known as a crookie—is suddenly trending internationally, and chef-owner Kitt Villasis-Corbin at La Patisserie (119 Flower Valley) in Florissant was quick to perfect the complex pastry.
Invented by a Paris bakery a few months ago, crookies were a quiet success until recently, when a social media influencer discovered them. The pastry went viral, and tutorials for home bakers quickly popped up. The true crookie experience is more sophisticated, however, than smooshing raw cookie dough into a pre-baked croissant. To taste it, head to La Patisserie on a Friday or Saturday.
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The Croissant
La Patisserie bills itself as St. Louis’ most Instagrammable French-Asian pastry shop, and Villasis-Corbin certainly has a flair for the visual. But she also incorporates a scientific approach to her baked goods.
Croissants, for example, take three to four days to make. The process includes a two-day fermentation period to ensure the proper gluten, lamination (folding the dough and butter to create very thin layers), and chilling the dough slightly before baking to harden the butter, so the croissants develop a signature airy, flaky texture.
When Villasis-Corbin moved to St. Louis, she had to adjust the standard croissant recipe that she had learned because the climate is different here. Another key to her perfectly flaky croissants is the butter. “You always have to use really, really good butter,” Villasis-Corbin says. “Most bakers use the same brand I do, because it has to be double grade A, with the exact right fat content.”
Once she had the recipe and ingredients sorted out, Villlasis-Corbin let her creativity flow. She shapes the laminated dough into cruffins (muffin-shaped croissants with deliciously oozy fillings created in Melbourne, Australia) and Lafayette croissants (circular pastries named after the New York City bakery that invented them).
“There are so many variations!” she says. “It’s like pasta—you can play around with it.”
The Cookie
Asked about the reason for using chocolate chip cookie dough versus another filling, Villasis-Corbin explains with a laugh that “anything American in Paris clicks.” She travels to France frequently to keep up with trends and techniques, and she visited the Maison Louvard bakery—originator of the crookie—during her trip in July 2023. (Before crookies went viral, the bakery reported that it was selling about 100 crookies per day; now, sales are usually more than 1,500 per day.)
Now that Villasis-Corbin has mastered her own version of the crookie, she’s not sharing all of her secrets, but she will say that the cookie dough is different than what she uses for the shop’s New York–style chunky cookies. “It has a different ratio of butter, eggs, and flour, so it isn’t too doughy,” she says.
The Bakery
Villasis-Corbin’s shop specializes in extravagantly decorated desserts. Everything is hand-made, including the labor-intensive macarons. A former model in her home country of the Philippines, she connects her passion for pastries and fashion with decadent themed brunches inspired by companies such as Chanel and Gucci, which attract guests from as far as New York.
She estimates that 80 percent of her customers are coming to North County from other parts of the St. Louis metro area. “My heart is very full for people to drive here,” she says. “St. Louis is such a foodie city.”
As for the Instagrammability of her decor, Villasis-Corbin explains that she owes a lot to influencers for helping keep small businesses like hers open by spreading the word. Plus, she loves to take a playful approach to food. “We love bringing trends here,” she says, “and we pride ourselves on being first.”
