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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
