Brooklyn Bake Off

There are lots of things I love about being a pastry chef: working with my hands, not working in an office, the nutty personalities that kitchens attract, making people (hopefully) happy. But lets face it, I’m not saving lives–not even close. My job affords me few opportunities to actually feel like I’m helping people or improving the world. So, when I was asked to be a judge for Fierce and Sweet, the first annual bake off to benefit New York Cares, a fantastic organization that mobilizes volunteers to meet community needs, I was was more than thrilled to accept.

This past Sunday, I made my way over to  Williamsburg, where 20 bakers–pros, hobbyists and business owners alike–set up shop in East River Bar’s side yard, hoping to impress us four judges with their sweets, their stories and their presentation. With the recent demise of Gourmet magazine and the seemingly endless popularity of non-chef-centric food magazines that aren’t even foodie-centric, along with the rise of in-your-face “food” television that’s more about loud voices and cartoon-ish faces than food (Top Chef and No Reservations blessedly aside), I admit to having some minor trepidations about what these contestants would bring to the table. But after tasting every single baked good (no small feat, I assure you), I was duly impressed and relieved that so many folks clearly still love to bake from scratch, put their creative food brains to good use and really think about what they make and how they make it. Score one for real every day food. Here are few highlights:

Alison Robicelli brought us Chicken and Waffle Cupcakes, a waffle-inspired cupcake topped with butter cream and a healthy nugget of fried chicken that had been dipped in maple syrup. My first thought was genius! Someone decided that bacon was not the only meat that could find it’s way to the dessert table. My second thought was, but wait, how long has that fried nugget been sitting out in the sun? Had the chicken been fried to order, an impossibility at this event, my excitement would not have wavered.  Still, after hearing Alison explain that she and her husband introduce a brand new cupcake every week or two at their shop, I was impressed–that’s a lot of cupcake ideas, and from the sound of it, a lot of good cupcake ideas. I left her table wishing I could have tried her pear and olive oil cake with blue cheese butter cream, port wine reduction and candied walnuts instead.

Blogger Raissa Nebie, stage name “Draculinaria,”  won our vote for The Most Surprising Ingredient with her use of pop rocks to top off her almond raspberry bars. It might have been nostalgia that won us over, but it was also her full commitment to her story. She was inspired by her obsession with True Blood (full disclosure: she is not the only one obsessed) and the pop rocks represented the feeling of euphoria that accompanies a bite.  She and the two women working her table coordinated their black and red outfits, complete with blood-stained neck bites.  She was clearly in it to win it–and she did. I would love to see her at every bake sale.

After trying 20 different sweet items, there was only one that had me wanting a second bite: Viviana Vitale’s alfajores, a cookie that she had eaten growing up spending summers in Argentina. Unable to find satisfactory alfajores back in the states, she and her grandmother set out to come up with their own and we were lucky enough to have them at Fierce and Sweet. I loved most the shortbread-like cookies that almost dissolved in my mouth; they were sandwiched with dulce de leche and covered in a bittersweet chocolate that made it almost the perfect bite. I wish more people would get together with their grandmothers to get results like this.

I loved the heart-felt effort that clearly went into every bite, every display (among them a white, wooden sheep that held “coconut wool” cupcakes), and the ideas that people were willing to try out (dehydrated sweet potato cream, anyone?). While not every dish was as successful as others, I’m convinced that every entrant was. Hearing their stories, both personal and bake-sale-related, put me in very good company–the entrants and I share a love for feeding people, a most basic joy and one, on that day anyway, lent support to New York Cares.