PrintDoes Anybody Buy the Cutesy Cakes at Chinatown Bakeries?
Various Chinatown cakes. Photographs by Robyn Lee
Chinese bakeries hold a special place in many hearts. But the garish cakes in the window, usually involving a Disney character or possessed animals, can we talk about those? Do people point and say "I want that one"? Do they have expiration dates? For the sake of our tummies, I hope they live and die in those window sills.
Miraculously, Danny of Food in Mouth was just sitting at Hon Cafe, of dirt-cheap bagged cake fame, and witnessed a changing of the cake guards.
Steph and I were just chilling in the bakery and all of a sudden I see one of the employees about to put a new cake into the display case. Ah... brand new cake. Cake that had not been sitting in the display case for a mysterious amount of time...It wasn't the prettiest cake ever but yo, fresh > prettiness when it comes to cakes.
Since this doesn't happen everyday, they of course bought the mixed fruit cake. Like other Chinatown cakes, it was two layers of plain cake with whipped cream and mixed fruit in the middle. Though Hon Cafe offers some pretty great designs, like pink piggies and race cars, this was just a classy shade of sea foam green. Maybe it wasn't gaudy enough to rot in there forever.
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4 Comments:
I love Chinatown cake, I honestly don't care at all what it looks like.
faycat at 5:00PM on 01/15/09
I wish all Chinatown cakes looked like BEE CAKE.
roboppy at 10:03PM on 01/15/09
not good. always the same bland dry cake with the same flavorless whipped cream.
alexeatsworld at 1:17AM on 01/16/09
Dragonboat Bakery on Bowery btw Grand and Hester also has these really fancy elaborate cakes. Once I even saw one shaped like male genitalia. It was hilarious. I've always wanted one but they are about 35+ bucks a. A plain 12 inch goes for only 8 bucks at other bakeries.
The whip cream is flavorless because most Chinese people are lactose intolerant so the whip cream contains no milk product just vegetable fats. Been to Hon bakery once. Don't exactly understand what the hype is about? Perhaps they have bad dry cakes. My go to place is Dragonland on Baxter; their sponge cakes are soft.
skinnyhippo at 2:24AM on 01/20/09