PARIS — All it took for the “crookie” to take shape was a baker looking for a diversion, his time-tested croissant recipe and a few cookies for inspiration.

It took TikTok to make it go viral.

Stephane Louvard created the crookie almost a year and a half ago when he came up with the idea of putting cookie dough into a croissant and then baking it again. But demand for his crookies has exploded in recent months after TikTok videos flaunted his creations.

On one day in February, Louvard sold 2,300 of the pastries at his bakery in a bustling Paris neighborhood.

“The entire planet is talking about us. Someone told me he even made the trip from Madrid only to get a crookie — it’s crazy,” Louvard said as he prepared a baking tray of croissants, ready to be cut in half and stuffed with chocolate chip cookie dough.

The crookie — Louvard’s son Nicolas, a business school student, came up with the name — has not just taken social media by storm. It has also spread to other bakeries across France and around the world.

The croissant has long been a favorite in the French capital — legend has it that Marie Antoinette first brought it from Austria in the late 18th century. But fusion baking has become more common in Paris and across France in recent years, with bakers embracing one trend after another, such as the brookie (fusing a brownie and a cookie), the cronut and the cruffin (which marry croissants with doughnuts and muffins).

Louvard, 51, who has made his own croissants from scratch for decades, got the inspiration for the crookie one morning in October 2022, when he was preparing croissants and saw his team making cookies beside him and decided to mix them together. He continued making crookies mostly for fun during his long shifts, which start at 4 a.m. daily.

He managed to sell a dozen or two a day, then abandoned them last summer when temperatures rose and sales of the heavy pastries declined. That fall, he started baking crookies again at the request of regulars, but sales never exceeded 30 a day.

Then a food guide featured the crookie on TikTok in December, racking up 1 million views. That video was soon followed by one made Feb. 1 by an influencer, Johan Papz, that has been viewed 2.9 million times.

“This is literally food porn,” Papz said in his video, brandishing the pastry at the camera. As he bites into it, a look of pleasure spreads across his face.

New customers crowded into Maison Louvard, Louvard’s bakery in central Paris.

“We started doubling quantities. We were reaching 600, 700 pieces a day, but it was never enough,” he recalled.

At the height of the crookie frenzy, Maison Louvard had to reorganize its production to satisfy the crowds.

Louvard said demand fell a bit during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and as the weather warmed up. But the bakery is still selling about 1,000 crookies a day, and tourists and locals are still flocking to try them.

Still, the crookie has its detractors.

“I’m choking on it right now. I wish I had a bottle of water,” said David Iemolo, a tourist from Philadelphia, who said he heard about the pastry mashup from social media. “Both individually are great. Put them together, you’re probably going over the top for me.”

On social media, comments describing crookies as too oily, too heavy or too “American” abound. There is also the price: 5.90 euros ($6.30) — roughly three times that of a typical croissant — for takeout, and 7.10 euros to eat in.

“It’s the price of a croissant added to that of a cookie,” Louvard said, citing the high quality of the butter, flour and chocolate he uses and the long hours put in by his staff.

Creating the perfect “viennoiserie” — pastry that is soft and airy inside, and crispy and buttery on the outside — for his croissants takes Louvard and his team 36 hours.