Please let these 'charcoal activated' vegan croissants be the end of the hipsterisation of pastries
Apologies to all the croissant purists out there, but what you're about to read might upset you.
Charcoal-activated vegan croissants have popped up in London. And, people have declared it too much even for east London.
The offending pastry was first brought to Twitter's collective attention with a viral tweet posted by Amy Charlotte Kean.
"I feel like this might be a bit much even for east London," opined Kean on Twitter.
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Kean spotted the croissant in an east London branch of Italian coffee shop Coco di Mama, accompanied by a note stating: "Tastes better than it looks!" Good to know!
A spokesperson for Coco di Mama told Mashable that "unlike a regular croissant, there is no butter," and the key ingredients of this pastry are "sunflower margarine, flour, activated charcoal, sugar, and lemon."
The spokesperson claims the alkaline properties of charcoal in the croissant "help to detoxify any poisons in the body by neutralising excess stomach acids." According to the Guardian, charcoal is used to "treat some overdoses and instances of acute poisoning," due to its ability to "absorb certain toxins in the gut" prior to them entering the bloodstream.
People flocked to Twitter to express their lack of approval of the hipster pastry.
Some took exception to the note which accompanied the pastry, with one person rightly pointing out that it could very well taste far worse than it looks.
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One clever chap suggested this whole charcoal-infused charade might just have been a burnt batch of croissants.
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Another comment sums up how we all truly feel about the bastardisation of the once-great croissant. It needs to stop. Now.
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First we had the cronut. Then came the frosting-stuffed croissant. They even tried to make the mince pie croissant happen.
Is the charcoal-activated croissant the death knell of hipserised croissants? Please, for the love of all that is pastry, make it stop.
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
