The first time I went to Baked, I had a bad experience. I was so disappointed that it hadn’t lived up to my expectations. I had heard about Baked for a long time, but the store was all the way out in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a very inconvenient trek, so I never went. Then they opened up a Tribeca location and I couldn’t wait to go. In particular, I had wanted to try the Brookster, which is their unique creation of a chocolate chip cookie inside of a brownie (hence the name). Loving both, I thought there was no way to go wrong. And, I had also been wanting to try their chocolate cake.
So off I go to the Tribeca location one day, immediately find the Brooksters, and my heart sinks. They looked like the driest, poorest quality brownies or cookies I’d seen. The dryness was just emanating from them. My skin started cracking and I became parched. I could not bring myself to even try them because their mediocrity was essentially a foregone conclusion.
On top of that, they didn’t have their chocolate cake available. In fact, they only had one type of cake slice available. How incredibly weird, I thought. A bakery that has over a dozen cakes on its menu is only offering one flavor of cake on any given day? Ugh. It happened to be their Lemon Drop Cake. Not wanting to return home empty handed, I bought a slice. And I also decided to throw in a holiday special they were having: the Eggnog Cheesecake Square. Sounded interesting.
The Lemon Drop Cake was lemon cake filled with lemon curd with vanilla lemon buttercream frosting. Though I was assured this cake would be moist (I was skeptical and asked after seeing the Brooksters), it was incredibly dry! Ugh. Cake 101 – it cannot be dry. It was a light cake, but just so mediocre. The lemon cake part was ok, but there was no lemon curd taste at all, and the lemon buttercream was just passable.
The Eggnog Cheesecake Square was about a 2×2 inch square. It’s funny to call it cheesecake as it was really half crust with a super thin layer of cheesecake on top and a dollop of whipped cream. The crust was hard, dry, and flavorless. The cheesecake on the other hand was overly spiced, but not even like eggnog. Just every “holiday spice” a kitchen could possibly have. No good.
Fast forward to over 3 years later. I somehow end up in that area on a day when something sweet was in order and I had no options other than this place. With serious trepidation, I decided to take another chance. But after my last experience, I actually decided to forgo food all together and ordered a simple hot chocolate instead, which I asked for extra hot. The workers were nice, the hot chocolate was pretty good, and importantly, it was prepared extra hot as I’d asked. I was relieved, and wondered whether it might be worth giving their desserts another try if I were ever in the area again one day.
Sure enough, that day came, and this time I decided to try their Deep Dark Brownie. Not a brownie/cookie mix like the Brookster, but just a brownie. Unlike the Brookster, which all these years later still looks incredibly dry, the Deep Dark Brownie looked dense and moist. I took a chance, and honestly it was delicious. Not only dense and moist like it looked, but also with a fantastically rich dark chocolate flavor and not at all overpoweringly sweet. I thought it was fantastic. So much so that I started seeking it out and buying it regularly. But then the day came that I thought it was time to branch out even more. After much due diligence and pestering of the workers over my choices, I opted for the Chocolate Cloud Cookie. Amazing! It’s honestly as light as a cloud and even less sweet than the brownie. Though it’s quite large, one can easily eat it all and not feel even the slightest sugar coma. The chocolate flavor is not as rich as in the brownie, but I thought it was great. So the trend continued, trying a variety of their offerings, including even the savory options. The grilled cheese on multi-grain bread with homemade tomato soup turned out to be a great choice as well.
Needless to say, I’ve changed my opinion. Though I cannot claim that everything at Baked is great, my first experience was exaggeratedly bad and I’m glad that years later, I was given the chance to try it again. The Brooksters still look incredibly dry and I cannot bring myself to try one to this day – they really need to fix that. And what’s the deal with a bakery having a bunch of cakes on their menu and then only offering 1 cake flavor a day? Well, apparently they do have all those flavors, but only available for purchase as a whole cake. They only offer individual slices of one, or at most two, cakes per day. This is why I was only able to get the Lemon Drop Cake slice that day. And why was it so dry? Because apparently their cake slices are from cakes that are a day or two old, that did not sell as a whole cake. So as not to waste them, they slice them up and offer them as single slices.
So there you have the pros and cons. But to end on a good note, that Deep Dark Brownie is absolutely one of the best brownies I’ve had. It’s delicious and it’s one you’ll return for over and over. Goes to show you that depending on what you choose to order, you could love it or hate it. Perhaps it isn’t ideal to be so inconsistent, but finding something you love anywhere is hard, so when you find it, you keep it! If you’re around Baked, take a chance and go because there’s some really great stuff there, but just choose wisely.
