An Edgewater bakery has gone viral for its unique croissants, drawing crowds of customers waiting for a taste.

Black Box Bakery is home to the famed croissant cubes. These block-shaped pastries are decadent inside and out, filled with an array of flavors and adorned with toppings.

“It’s been crazy. We’ve had crowds of people selling us out,” said Arielle Israel, owner of the bakery.

The bakery makes the croissant cubes in two sizes — mini and large. The mini is a single serving while the large can be split among several people and is only available on weekends.

“The large cubes are just very time-consuming, like how much we put into the decoration and all that. And the mini cubes are just more feasible for us during the week,” Israel said. “We had a very high demand, so I got mini cubes so we could offer people who want to try the cube something that they could try on their own.”

Israel started Black Box Bakery in 2019 with her husband, Ty Webb, and best friend from culinary school, Megan Read. At the time, the trio operated out of Ironton Distillery as a wholesale bakery.

“Initially, we were thinking of a bakery and many concepts, but we started wholesaling as kind of an easy start to the bakery business,” Israel said. “We just didn’t have (the) opportunity to truly be creative in the wholesale space as much as we wanted.”

As the business grew, they looked for retail locations, eventually opening the store in Edgewater Public Market in March.

“It was a crazy ride for us, but we’re very happy to do only retail at the moment. We don’t do wholesale anymore,” Israel said. “We get to be as creative as possible, and that’s where the cubes came from.”

The croissant cube was inspired by social media trends of square breads and different baking molds.

“I bought a mold. It sat in my cabinet for, I don’t know, over a year because wholesaling didn’t really give me the option to kind of (experiment) too much,” Israel said. “Then the production manager, Jordan, was also seeing some cubed things online, and I was like, ‘Hey, I have a mold. I’ve been dying to try it.’”

After some experimentation, the croissant cube was born.

“We kind of workshopped it, and wanted to create something that would be an alternative to a cake, I’d say. Like something that could be shared between a few people. So that’s where the large cube came from,” Israel said.

How is the croissant cube made? It’s a delicate process.

The bakers start by laminating the dough, as they do with every other croissant, said Israel, who is also the head laminator. Lamination is the process of folding and rolling butter into dough to make super-thin layers.

Rolling the dough like a log, the croissant is baked in the mold. Five holes are punched in each corner to make sure the filling is evenly distributed, Israel said. Finally, the cube is decorated.

The bakery rolls out new flavors each week. The bakery has offered flavors such as strawberry elderflower with strawberry jam inside, fruity pebbles with Earl Grey cream filling, and chocolate hazelnut, a fan favorite. But Israel’s personal favorite? Pistachio.

“We’re always trying to make more,” Israel said. “We’re trying to meet demand as much as possible and have people try out whatever they can.”

And while the croissant cubes went viral, the bakery is home to other popular treats, including filled and colorful croissants. The bakery recently introduced a savory monkey bread.

“Everyone’s going crazy for it, in the bakery at least. It’s a cheesy scallion monkey bread,” Israel said. “That is my favorite new one.”

Looking to the future, Israel said the bakery is workshopping a teardrop-shaped croissant, as well as introducing new fall flavors.

“We’re trying to get into the fall season, getting some more warm flavors in. So we’re basically baking in new shapes, new flavors,” Israel said.