Americans, and even the English, believe the cruffin was invented in California, where it became the signature dish of Mr. Holmes Bakehouse in San Francisco. This is not true. The cruffin as we know it was invented in 2013 in Australia by Kate Reid, baker and proprietor of Melbourne’s cult bakery, Lune. Reid’s Lune Croissanterie, founded in 2012, had set new standards for French-style pastries in Australia and, perhaps, the world. After all, her croissants were later acclaimed as the best in the world by the New York Times.

In 2013, Reid’s invention was introduced to Mr. Holmes Bakehouse by an Australian pastry chef, Ry Stephen, who went on to trademark the name and popularise the pastry.  Stephen subsequently took the croissant/muffin hybrid to his New York bakery, Supermoon.

But Kate Reid wasn’t the first to create a pastry called a cruffin. In Canada, in 1985, the Vancouver Sun wrote enthusiastically about a new treat available at the Pacific National Exhibition:

What’s crusty on the outside, bakes to great heights, comes filled with a variety of sweet or savory fillings and costs $2? It’s a cruffin, the fast food item that is causing a stir at the PNE this year. 

It was the invention of Walter Zogar, who described it as a cross between a cream puff and a muffin. The name came from a combination of crepe and muffin, as his first attempts to create the pastry used a crepe baked in a muffin tin. Zogar went on to open a food outlet he named Turgers and Cruffins, selling his new creation along with burgers made from turkey meat. He attempted to franchise the idea, but the absence of references to the business after the end of the 1980s suggests that his would-be fast-food empire never materialised.

Fast forward to 2013. In May 2013, a new croissant mash-up appeared: the cronut, a deep-fried doughnut/croissant hybrid launched by Dominique Ansel at his SoHo, New York, bakery. It was in July of the same year that Kate Reid looked for a new signature dish and the modern cruffin – croissant dough swirled and baked in a muffin pan – was born.

Trained as an aerospace engineer, Reid turned to baking as a relief from the stress of her job with the Williams Formula 1 racing team. Quitting the world of motor racing, she worked in bakery businesses in Melbourne before heading to Paris where she convinced Christophe Vasseur, of the Du Pain et des Idées boulangerie to take her on as an unpaid apprentice.

Returning to Melbourne in 2012, Reid started Lune, developing her own techniques and supplying cafés from her premises in suburban Elwood. Her brother joined her in the business in 2013 and queues formed on weekends to snap up the croissants, kouign-amanns (a traditional Belgian pastry) and cruffins from the tiny bakery window. The first cruffin fillings were lemon curd and kaya (coconut jam) flavoured custard.