An American Treat in Manhattan's Historic Germantown

Chickens are everywhere in Two Little Red Hens, a narrow, brick-walled bakery in Manhattan’s Yorkville. From the shop’s logo to flocks of porcelain figurines, the country icon has perched on every surface. With a checkered red picnic cloth valance over the front door, it’s a country house kitchen.

The bakery serves up Midwestern Americana with flair in a historically German neighborhood. The café, which seats eight at tiny tables, is nestled between two monumental Germantown landmarks from the 1930s. Two Little Red Hens has been unabashedly American since 2002.

All cakes, cheesecakes, cookies, cupcakes, muffins and pies are made daily, from scratch, in true American-style cooking. Think “Little House on the Prairie” when times were good and the dairy cows were plentiful. (Butter, butter and more butter are the key ingredients here.)

Pie crusts are more buttery than French-pastry flaky. Buttercream frostings pile high on cupcakes and layer thick over cakes - no thin, powdered sugar icings in this kitchen. Cheesecakes are dense and smooth, distinctly “New York-style” without a hint towards Roman origin.

Healthy eating, be gone. Dietary restrictions? Sorry about it.

Clockwise: Pumpkin Cheesecake, Brooklyn Blackout cupcake, Apple Pie.

Two glass refrigerator cases flaunt round layer cakes, six to eight inches in diameter ($36-$49), cupcakes, in regular and mini sizes ($1.75-$3), and palm-width slices of cheesecake ($5 each). Cakes and cupcakes come in eight flavors - Brooklyn Blackout, carrot, coconut, lemon, marble, raspberry, red velvet, and half-yellow, half-chocolate. Banana and pumpkin harvest are seasonal specialties.

The bakery is famous for its Brooklyn Blackout cake – dark chocolate cake with a milk chocolate pudding center and topped with chocolate frosting. It’s moist, rich and surprisingly balanced. The cocoa cake is semisweet; the creamy center is milky. So the contrastingly ultra-sweet chocolate buttercream doesn’t overpower a forkful.

Three chocolates make up the rich, moist, balanced Brooklyn Blackout cake.

Fruit-based desserts are also a standout. Cloth-lined wicker baskets nest berry and pumpkin muffins, both made with fresh fruits. Apple, chess, cherry, pecan and pumpkin pies roost on the counter.
Real squash pieces amp up the flavor in a fluffy pumpkin muffin sprinkled with brown sugar and seeds. But the fruit and cinnamon-syrup glaze that stuff the apple pie taste like grandma’s. Sweet, tender apple slices make a filling that’s just spicy enough.

A piece of pie will run you $5; the whole thing, $32. Muffins are $3 each.

For more than a decade, Two Little Red Hens has been the new kid on the 2nd Avenue block between East 85th and East 86th streets. The bakery was born in 1992 in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The Yorkville location opened in 2002. After a 2006 split between baking and business partners Mary Louise Clemens and Christina Winkler, the Brooklyn shop became Clemens’ Ladybird Bakery. Winkler’s Two Little Red Hens retained its name, storefront and recipes on the Upper East Side.

But its 12 years in business are chump change considering the 80-year-old establishments that flank it. Delicatessen Schaller & Weber and biergarten Heidelberg Restaurant were founded when Yorkville housed the majority of the city’s 680,000 German immigrants. Only 560 live there now, according to the Department of City Planning.

Today the neighborhood is home to new American families, young professionals and elderly yuppies. Two Little Red Hens has tapped this niche market, those who want high-quality ingredients without the health-conscious attitude. Brilliant baking, and butter, does the trick every time.

Two Little Red Hens is located at 1652 2nd Ave., between East 85th and East 86th streets. It is open Monday through Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Credit cards accepted.
 

R.I.P. to the Mudtruck (For Now)

Mudtruck at Astor Place, 2012.

Any current Cooper Union, New School or New York University student can tell you a few things about the landmarks of New York City's Astor Place. One will likely involve Tony Rosenthal's cube – Alamo, as the rotating sculpture is officially titled. For coffee-loving students, the other is the Mudtruck.

In my four undergraduate years at NYU, I have adored the Astor Place Mudtruck for a quick coffee on the way to journalism class. A mobile version of the coffee and pastry fares served at nearby Mudspot (307 East 9th St.), this orange or chrome (its Summer 2014 look) converted ConEd truck was reborn as coffee cart in 2008. Large coffees go for $2 and espresso drinks for $3 to $5. Mudtruck parks daily outside the Uptown 6 train subway entrance, across the street from Starbucks. Shade.

At least, it used to.

A thriving truck in Greenwich Village this summer, with a new chrome vinyl wrap.

Sadly, the truck disappeared from Astor Place in September. In October, Rosenthal's cube was boxed up and vanished, too.


Astor Place is currently undergoing a major transformation by the New York City Department of Transit. The site is all construction and noise now, but will soon be an improved streetscape for
pedestrian safety and increased green park space. And a more attractive home for the cube.

But, what about the Mudtruck? I was ready to (reluctantly) say "rest in peace" to my favorite on-the-go-coffee spot until a little website snooping bred good news. The truck has planned a return to Astor Place next spring – hopefully to a reinvigorated urban hub there.

For now, all you Villagers (and commuters) can console yourself with coffee from another East Village option.

Here are a few suggestions.

Blend Your Own Brew at Roasting Plant Coffee Co.

Javabot at Roasting Plant Coffee Co. 81 Orchard St. New York City.

Rin Raj stepped up to the barista and ordered the usual. A single cup of freshly-roasted Brazilian beans were ground and brewed as he watched. For $2.18, he walked out with 8-ounces of his favorite beverage.

“This is the best coffee in Manhattan,” said Raj as he left the Roasting Plant Coffee Co., where he is a weekend regular. Like many New Yorkers, he has discovered the only coffee shop in the city where customers can choose their own blend of beans for a single cup of joe. Raj said he has tasted all seven single-origin options, and experimented with mixes of several.

The first Roasting Plant outpost opened in 2007 at 81 Orchard St. on the Lower East Side. A second location was added the following year at 75 Greenwich Ave. in the West Village. Last year, the company was recruited to open a coffee shop in Detroit.

This is the growing world of third-wave coffee, independent shops that treat the coffee bean as a specialty product. The first wave began in the 19th century, when the espressos of Italian immigrants led to ubiquitous coffee drinking in American homes. The second wave was corporate coffee, served up by Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and Peet’s Coffee and Tea.

Roasting Plant is taking on the third-wave with a patented coffee-making machine. Only three of them exist in the entire world. The all-in-one microbrewing and roasting machine can even produce a uniform grind of up to four types of beans at once. After whirring for 45 seconds, it produces one fresh, 8-ounce cup.

“We’re not trying to be arbiters of taste; we’re not trying to tell people what to drink,” said Roasting Plant owner and founder Mike Caswell, who invented the machine.

Brazilian and Guatemalan blend iced coffee.

Caswell, a former director of profit improvement at Starbucks, Corp. in Seattle, has a background in industrial engineering. His invention, dubbed the Javabot, is a system of transparent and matte metal pneumatic tubes that roasts, sorts, grinds and brews coffee beans in-house. The Javabot at the narrow Orchard Street shop sits on the floor along the right wall of the 20-foot deep-by-10-foot wide space.

“In an attempt not to limit the customer, we open the selection of flavors and let them take their own journey,” Caswell added.

If customers need help, Roasting Plant baristas are trained to recommend blends. But trends show that many more of today’s consumers have the coffee competence to choose a preferred flavor profile.

“We’re in a really remarkable era for coffee consumers,” said Murray Carpenter, author of “Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts and Hooks Us.” “We know more about the conditions under which coffee is grown and coffee drinkers are becoming more savvy and sophisticated.”

Specialty coffee now makes up 51 percent of the $31 billion United States market, according to the National Coffee Association’s 2014 annual drinking trends study. For the first time, coffee grown in ideal microclimates has surpassed ordinary, non-regulated cups of joe.

At Roasting Plant, cards next to each option educate the coffee drinker on “notes” present in each bean, from blueberry to dark chocolate. Carpenter compared this new gourmet coffee taste to that of a sommelier, an expert wine steward. Caswell used the same analogy.

“I think in general the American, and even global, coffee consumer is becoming more and more sophisticated and knowledgeable,” Caswell said. “Like wine, if you have interest you will pursue it.”

“I like a lot of coffees from Ethiopia,” said Matt Arkin, a first-time customer at the West Village shop. “They have a lot of notes of blueberry and citrus, and it’s a pretty bright roast.”

He said his cup of Guatemalan coffee at Roasting Plant was as fresh as any specialty shop’s pour-over, a water-poured-over-grounds method that takes about three minutes for a microbrewed cup.

“It’s very good,” he said. “No complaints.”

Why Your Union Square Greenmarket Produce May Not Be USDA Certified Organic

Union Square Greenmarket, New York City. 2014.

Less than 10 percent of the farmers at the ever-popular Union Square Greenmarket are selling organic produce. But many more of them farm in organic ways – they just don’t want to pay the price to get licensed.

It’s not that these uncertified Northeastern farmers are flying false flags. They say they are committed to the government’s definition of organic farming: food grown without synthetic pesticides or chemical mutagens. Without a USDA Organic seal, however, self-evaluation verifies a farmer’s clean growing process. At the Greenmarket, some farmers debate if this is enough.

“There’s a lot of ambiguity on whether or not it’s important to be certified,” said John Adams of Hudson Valley Organic. “I think it is.”

Adams, 56, specializes in microgreens, tender, young salad greens. His greenhouse farm is in Wawarsing, New York, just west of Poughkeepsie. He has had his Seal since 1992, the first year the government began regulating organic farming but has been producing organically since 1986.

John Adams, owner and farmer of USDA certified organic microgreens farm, Hudson Valley Organic.

Adams claimed that many of the market’s farmers who dropped their government certifications in recent years own high-revenue farms. Because the label’s cost is based on a percentage of organic sales, these big farms are not willing (or sometimes, not able) to pay the higher fee.

“I think you should be certified,” said Adams. “I’m glad there are certifications out there for the big companies because they’re going to do a better job in their [practice], even if it’s not perfect.”

“Some of our farmers were doing organic farming before there was a certification process,” said a Greenmarket manager. They stopped using the “organic” label because “they don’t feel it represents their farm and what they do.” The government’s licensing standards are a key part of the rift, he added.

The farm stand of John and Sue Gorzynski, nestled along the west side of the park, proudly displays the name “Gorzynski Ornery Farm” on a white board of vegetable prices. The word “ornery” replaces a crossed out “organic.”

“Sun, seed, soil and water,” Sue said. “That’s what we use. That’s organic.”

Gorzynski Ornery Farm is formerly USDA certified organic. In 2002, owners John and Sue Gorzynski dropped the title.

Since 1979, the couple has been farming organic produce in Cochecton Center, in Sullivan County, New York. Then, their business was called “Gorzynski Organic Farm,” certified by the USDA. 

However, with the enactment of the 2002 Farm Bill, they chose to rescind their certification.

“Organic to us means no herbicides, no pesticides,” said Sue, behind the crates of carrots creating her Greenmarket cash desk. She claims that the USDA now allows organic farmers to use 137 different synthetics, while retaining their Organic Seal. This number is drawn from the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances. That doesn’t sit well with the Gorzynskis.

The Greenmarket inspects every farm at market annually to check inventory, not farming practices. It serves only to provide consumers with direct communication with those cultivating their produce. For consumers, the organic produce standards at stands like Gorzynski Ornery Farm require taking a farmer’s word.

“[Uncertified organic farmers] prefer to just talk to people about what they grow and actually explain why their food’s better,” the Greenmarket manager said, “not just with a label.”

Organic carrots and radishes from Gorzynski Ornery Farm.

How Quinn Ventura's Vegan Dessert Will Change the Way You Value Butter

Acai, blueberries, strawberries, banana, agave and soy milk make a
filling, vegan snack in Blossom Du Jour's Blue Velvet smoothie.

Quinn Ventura has got baking down to a science.

The 28-year-old is head pastry chef for Manhattan-based vegan food brand Blossom. Since 2010, she has been adapting traditional desserts for its animal-product-free menu, without compromising taste.

Ventura's bakery has been busier than ever with the opening of a fourth Blossom du Jour takeout café this summer. Luckily, she's got a few tricks up her sleeve. The key to successful vegan food is cooking substitutions and the chef has mastered the method.

“For me, [baking] has always been trial and error,” said the Greenville, N.Y. native. A chef father and baker mother inspired her interest in food. Culinary training at SUNY Schenectady gave her kitchen skills. 

She credits television show "America’s Test Kitchen" for her expertise in creating animal-free recipes that emulate butter, milk and egg-based desserts. Ventura's go-to ingredient is Earth Balance, a plant-based oil blend that she says "mimics butter."

Her own bakery experiments have found that bananas, dates and tofu can create texture and sweetness for breads and cookies. A simple baking soda and vinegar reaction will raise a cake in the oven.

The Oatmeal Harvest Cookie is buttery, chewy and 100% vegan.

“I had only ever made one vegan recipe before I started working with Blossom,” she said. 

In fact, Ventura, a vegan herself, didn’t make her first batch of cookies until she was 22! Now, she runs the Blossom kitchen, cranking out an obscene amount of baked goods each day: 300 to 400 cookies, 150 cupcakes, 32 mini pies, 36 loaves of banana bread and 180 brownies, on average.

I was impressed after one bite of a Blossom oatmeal harvest cookie and a lick of vegan “cream cheese” frosting. Ventura’s alternative baked goods have convinced me, and New York, to embrace conscious eating, and maybe rethink butter.

10 Recipe Websites Every Student Should Already Be Following

Image via The Kitchn

Over the summer, I officially moved into my own New York City apartment. Now, it's bye-bye to seemingly endless semesters of tiny college dorm kitchens and hello to counter space. I've begun cooking with the regularity I've always wanted. And subsequently have invested in a lovely little supply of reusable containers to bring that homemade food to class and work.

As a senior in college, I've already got a lot on my plate. Between rent, bills and school expenses, cooking saves me green for weekends out. The process is a creative way to relax at the end of a ten hour internship day. Since the beginning of my dorm days, I've amassed quite a host of sources for food inspiration.

Here are ten of my favorite recipe websites, all suitable for the busy (and budget-conscious) student: