Bryan Abrams, our crack researcher and Special Baked Goods Editor, contributes this report about his most special favorite bakery:
New York City thrives on abnormality. You can find it in the pure waves of volcanic heat rising on the subway platforms during summer. You can feel it as your write your rent check every month, which is astronomical; especially considering your shower is in your kitchen. You can try not to stare at it when it’s coming at you in droves on the streets in the mind-boggling array of pretty women who call this place home (which makes up for everything else, of course). So it’s not surprising that even our bakeries are out there. One bakery in particular caught my attention a few weeks back, when I stumbled in after a particularly wet brunch.
This wasn’t a flour-drenched mom & pop on Main Street. In fact, there’s no flour to be found. Nor is it on any Main Street, but rather tucked away on Broome Street in NYC’s Lower East Side. An adorable, doddering old woman does not run this bakery. Nor does a mustachioed old-timer in a baker’s hat. Nope, BabyCakes NYC is owned and operated by an attractive young woman named Erin McKenna, who has a staff filled with attractive young women (including her sister Elizabeth), all of whom appear (when in their pink BabyCakes dress uniforms) to have just crossed the time-space continuum from an extremely sexy 1955. The place, it should be noted, is vegan. It’s kosher. It’s gluten free. It’s wheat free. They don’t use any white sugar. They sweeten most of their products with agave nectar. It’s all natural. It’s organic. And did I mention that the confections are being created by a slew of pretty girls? In pink retro-style dresses? Shouldn’t all bakeries be like this?
While the employees are easy on the eyes and the baked goods delicious in your mouth, the business itself is commendable because BabyCakes NYC goes against the NY grain by not overcharging you for their high quality product.
In a town where everything is priced at a premium, it’s nice to go into a place where it all looks and tastes so good, and yet costs what you’d expect from that mom & pop on Main Street. Cupcakes go for under $3, brownies for under a buck, and a whole host of good and yet good for you muffins, cookies, and cakes that are reasonably priced. And during this Halloween season, they’re selling Marilyn Manson cupcakes, which is a blood-filled chocolate cupcake with purple patent leather corset frosting. Trust me, it’s to die for.
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Comments on this entry:
So this sounds like the Big Apple Cornell hippie chick cousin of THEE SEXIEST Bakery in the world: the centuries old The Demel in Vienna.
http://www.demel.at/index_flash.htm
The Demel is the Burt Lancaster or Anita Ekberg in their prime of patisserie/bakery/candy shoppes.
I'm all for health but leaving out the butter and sugar when and where it counts is like a bed without a mattress.