“They taste just like regular cookies.”
So said a Bay Ridge Bakery (7805 Fifth Avenue) counterperson over the weekend, but she didn’t need to push the sale—she had my girlfriend at “vegan cookies.” Just the sight at a classic Brooklyn bakery of chocolate-drizzled and chocolate-dipped cookies, free of eggs and dairy, was enough to make any animal sympathizer order a pound, taste untested.
Vegans and their long-suffering friends know that old-school cakemakers are the last kinds of people you’d ever expect to find baking up something vegan-friendly. (It’s welcome but not as surprising to spot vegan treats at newer, trendier-seeming places, like Little Cupcake.) But the world is changing! Between this and bike lanes, de Blasio types are taking over the neighborhood!
Even better is that the cookies really are delicious, just like what I remember regular cookies to taste like—maybe even better, as the vegan cookies turn a little soft and chewy when you bite into them; they’re neither a little brittle nor crispy. I shared them with some nonvegans, who were all impressed. “I’ve never had vegan baked-goods this good before,” one told me. Me neither, and I have a heck of a lot more experience.
Bay Ridge Bakery opened in 1974 as a wholesaler, but quickly became a retailer, too, when locals followed the fresh bakery smells and wandered in, according to its website. In years past—as recently as 2014—it has participated in the Storefront Art Walk; between that and the vegan cookies, it must be the most progressive old-school bakery in the neighborhood. Throw it some business, even if you don’t care how dairy cows are treated. (It’s badly!)
Follow Hey Ridge on Twitter @heyridgebk
