I Tried Toronto's Giant Viral Croissant & You Don't Want To Know How Much Butter Is In It

There are many bakeries in Toronto where you can find some of the best croissants ever, but Little Pebbles is one of the few cafes in the city where you can get a ginormous version of the typically small and flaky delicacy.

Paris is known as the City of Love and for me, the French croissant is the pastry of love in the food world. A good croissant can lead to love at first bite, especially if they are freshly baked and warm out of the oven.

I bought a giant croissant from Little Pebbles in Toronto and it was better than I expected, not just because of the size but because of the flavour. Once I bit into the pastry, I knew I'd be buying more of them in my lifetime, even if it did mean getting stared at.

Honestly, I couldn't believe my eyes when I opened the box with the giant croissant in it. The people around me in Kensington Market were also shocked to see it, and many of them were taking pictures of me with my infant-sized pastry.

The giant croissant itself was soft, flaky, warm and freshly baked. Even after hours of it sitting on my desk, I continued to eat it over the course of the day and each time I bit into it, I fell more and more in love.

Cafes have started making gigantic versions of the French pastry in several different cities, and videos of these oversized croissants have gone viral all over TikTok. In fact, people worldwide have been sharing their versions of the mega-croissants and the sizes are whack.

But what occasion would call for the purchase of such a big pastry?

I think birthday cakes should be replaced with giant croissants. You could also simply buy one massive croissant for your next weekend brunch get-together, rather than buying a bunch of small ones.

At Little Pebbles in Toronto, the best way to grab a giant croissant is to order it beforehand and head over there at your allocated pick-up time. The croissant costs $25 and can seriously feed a village.

You can choose between a classic plain croissant or jazz it up and get pain au chocolate, almond chocolate or pistachio.

I personally like a plain croissant because there's so much more you can add to it, like scrambled eggs, strawberry jam and even Nutella.

Giant plain croissant in Toronto.Mira Nabulsi | Narcity

Little Pebbles' flaky and buttery croissant is 10 times bigger than the regular-sized croissant that they sell in their store, and it tastes just as good as the very best classic version you can find.

"All of our croissants are crafted from scratch using high fat NEWZEALAND butter, and show perfectly shaped honeycomb inside with ample amount of fillings made of premium ingredients," they shared.

Speaking of butter, I had to ask: how many sticks of butter were used to make the croissant? Little Pebbles did not tell me exactly how much, but they did share that 50% of the massive thing was butter.

Little Pebbles giant croissant.Mira Nabulsi | Narcity

A typical French croissant is made of layers of dough and butter to create the crunch and consistency you like. In a typical recipe, around three to four sticks of butter are used to make around 16 croissants. But, usually, you'll eat one or two and feel like it's enough. But, the dangerous part about a giant croissant is that you could feel inclined to finish the whole thing and the problem is that it is doable.

Making an oversized croissant typically means using the same recipe but changing the instructions. Instead of cutting the dough up into smaller sizes, you just use the whole thing!

There are around 400 calories in a croissant and so, if the giant recipe uses the ingredients for 16, then that huge, flaky pastry would have been approximately 6,400 calories and roughly half a kilogram of butter...

It's a good thing I didn't eat the whole thing all in one go, even though I could've easily done so because it was so warm and fresh.

But did you know that croissants didn't originate in France? According to the Institute of Culinary Education, croissants are actually an adaptation of a kipferl, which is a traditional yeast bread roll in the shape of a crescent.

An Austrian artillery officer, August Zang, founded a Viennese bakery in Paris in 1839, where the people fell in love with the pastry and started imitating it.

But, it wasn't until 1915 that Sylvain Claudius Goy reinvented the kipferl into the French pastry we know and love today. Instead of brioche dough, Goy used laminated yeast dough and folded butter into it to give it the layers and flakiness that are typically associated with a croissant in our modern times.

If Toronto's giant croissant still isn't big enough for you, there are some other enormous croissants being sold in other cities across Canada, although you might have to put in a special request in some cases.

In Montreal, for instance, MTL Blog's Mike Chaar asked L'Amour du Pain to make a gigantic croissant and they absolutely delivered. L'Amour du Pain doesn't sell giant croissants, but they made an exception for Chaar and baked a croissant that's roughly twice as big as the one from Toronto's Little Pebbles.

"The ingredients used were enough to create nearly 30 regular-sized croissants, making the massive croissant a whopping 11,200-calorie treat," he wrote, adding that it took 1 kilogram of butter to make L'Amour du Pain's "masterpiece."

Vancouver residents can also get a taste of the giant croissant trend at Davie Village Bakery and Gelato.

Davie Village Bakery recently started selling giant croissants for $15 and while they look slightly smaller than the ones from Little Pebbles, they come in more flavours. The cafe is selling Nutella, pistachio, raspberry, mango and vanilla versions of the croissant, and each one comes topped with decorations to make it even more Instagram-worthy.

Of course, they're not the most traditional French croissants, but they're still pretty stunning to see on someone's plate.