Serious Eats: New York
Does 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.