A new recipe has been taking over TikTok in the Netherlands: the crompouce. This hybrid croissant-tompouce has garnered both support and disgust on social media, with many people flocking to cafes and bakeries to try and grab their very own cream-filled, icing-covered croissant.
For the uninitiated, a tompouce is a great example of traditional Dutch food. A cream-filled cake, consisting of two sheets of puff pastry, sandwiched with custard cream (crème pâtissière), and topped with icing. For many, this cake is oh-so-lekker all by itself, but thanks to some radical Dutch bakers, the classic cake has gotten a twist: the addition of the French croissant!
Now, the new cake, dubbed the crompouce, features a croissant, sliced lengthwise, filled with custard, and topped with icing. The new pastry has been dubbed as a hype by many critics, but given its popularity, could the crompouce be here to stay?
The crowds outside the bakeries say: maybe. Several Dutch media outlets have reported crowds of people attending cake shops, cafes and bakeries in several cities, including Breda, Amsterdam and Hoorn. According to NL Times, crompouce have even been spotted in some Albert Heijn stores in the south of the country.
The newspaper also talked to many people selling the pastry, who said that a lot of the customers who buy the treat have seen it online. "You can tell it's because of TikTok," a representative from Amsterdam’s Bakery Lourens told NL Times. "They buy it and immediately take a photo or a video."
Though the online trend is only just sweeping across the new generation of crompoucers, those with a truly refined palette will know that the concept first came out of a bakery in Utrecht back in 2021. The bakery released the new pastry to celebrate King’s Day in that year, and while the pastries did not go viral at the time, they certainly went down a treat. Guess some people are just a little late to the party!