Sweets Spotlight: My Baker Made Me...

The danish is a simple enough affair. It consists of a shell, a filling and sometimes a topping. Similarly, the black and white cookie is nothing more than a unification of two types of fondant and soft yellow cake. Yet, due to the nature of baking and confectioner ingenuity, these treats can come in many different forms. Not all of these incarnations are equal. YourBaker's take on the cheese danish and the relatively uniform black and white cookie make it obvious that even the simplest formulas leave room for tasty innovation.


Fresh is the key word when discussing these delicacies. Your Baker's pastries are soft and receptive to the gentle chewing one associates with baked goodies. The yellow cake of the black and white cookie stands out because it's moist and spongy, unlike most of the other alternatives near 86th street, which are dry and more akin to bread than a confection.

The danish is an excellent example of subtle creativity, the simple aspects given a tune-up with the addition of confectioner's sugar and soft crumbles as toppings. Still, what really sells it is the most base element: the cheese. It has a gentle taste better suited to mature palates. Resting between the overly sweet packaged goods at bodegas and the typically bland filling of most local bakeries, it leans slightly in the direction of zest without tripping into it face first.

Sweets Spotlight: Sir, There's no Egg in my Eggcream.

Hiding somewhere in the evolutionary chain between the cocoa bean and the chocolate milkshake lurks the Egg Cream. Having fallen out of fashion, this treat is often forgotten. Luckily for people in Bay Ridge, Hinsch's Confectionery is a veritable time portal. Step through the door, arrive in the 80s and enjoy a sip of this hard-to-find but easy-to-enjoy beverage. For the low price of $1.50, the only excuse not to is laziness.



For those of you unfamiliar with the elusive egg cream, it's fairly simple. First, there's no eggs or cream. It consists chiefly of chocolate syrup, seltzer water and milk. Don't be intimidated. It sounds like a cheap milkshake and it is, but it has a taste all its own. Featuring a light, frothy head, each sip is bubbly. There's a mild chocolate taste, with the carbonation from the seltzer mostly flattened out. In the end, it touches your palate like coffee; The first sip is bitter, the second sip is better and the third produces an out of body experience.