December 17, 2014 | Short Order

Sugar Couture Queen opens shop in East Williamsburg

By Elizabeth Nelson

Always take a cookie for the road
Always take a cookie for the road

          The stocking cap and skintight-jean-wrapped folks at the Graham Avenue L train stop in East Williamsburg don’t appear quite ready to start breeding en masse, Park Slope style, but when they do, they’ve got a new spot to buy custom-made birthday cakes for their privileged offspring.

          Cake-caterer to the stars Penny Stankiewicz has opened her first shop, Sugar Couture, two blocks from the East Williamsburg station where I herded my junior taster (aka my daughter) through a bearded and tattooed crowd on a rainy December evening. Following the navigation app on my phone, I managed to walk right past the tiny storefront. Luckily my sidekick noticed the building numbers were going the wrong way and led me back.

          There is not much dawdle-room inside the wood-herringboned space with its requisite vintage stools, but we squeezed in to survey the countertop overflowing with cookies, brownies, cakes, croissants, and more. My offspring chose a classic chocolate chip cookie to start. Small, flat, and golden brown, it was too crispy for me. I preferred the dense and chewy pecan raisin brownie, topped with a feathery sprinkling of sea salt, and possessing, for my taste, the perfect amount of sweetness.


The pecan raisin brownie was a standout

          I tried to persuade the kid to try a baked quail egg in puff pastry, telling her it tasted just like quiche, but she demurred, zeroing in on a tray of homemade caramels, which she pronounced “chewy, everyday caramel, but very rich.” Brushing pastry crumbs off my chin, I chatted with Stankiewicz about her goals. The café is her first foray into selling cake by the slice, but she’ll still create custom cakes for weddings, birthdays, and other celebrations. “I’ll be making mini cakes, customized for boys and girls,” she said. Good thing she isn’t in Park Slope, where parents prize gender neutrality in all things.


Caramel cake with brown butter cream cheese icing

          Stankiewicz said she can make cakes in any shape clients can dream up. I tried to imagine hipster parent fantasies: Handlebar mustache-shaped cakes. A cake completely covered with flutters of kale.

          Before heading out, we tried a few more things: a roasted banana sandwich cookie, which the junior later named her favorite thing – “like a brownie with banana cream inside” – a heavenly slice of caramel cake with brown butter cream cheese frosting, and a miniature pumpkin fig cheesecake, which might have been my favorite. It was light and creamy, with a delicate, crumbly cinnamon graham cracker crust. Stankiewicz’s signature croissant filled with homemade bacon-maple jam went over less well. I found it overly salty and not flaky enough, but the two of us seemed to be in the minority, as they were eagerly snatched up every time a new tray emerged.


The pumpkin fig cheesecake is pleasantly – and surprisingly – airy.

           We left with a sugar cookie for the road and a hankering for something green and healthy. Luckily, we were in the right borough to find kale in abundance.

 Sugar Couture, 386 Graham Avenue, at Skillman Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211; 718.349.1440; www.sugar-couture.com




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