Brooklyn in Love

by Amy Thomas

  The brothers who perhaps best symbolize this Brooklyn food movement, Michael and Rick Mast, started selling their Mast Brothers chocolate bars in 2007 at a flea market and are now found around the world. Wrapped in impeccably designed papers, the bars come in esoteric flavors like smoke, coffee, and goat milk and have probably fetched the brothers gazillions of dollars.

  Nekisia Davis was working at Franny’s (the pizzeria on Flatbush Avenue) when she started making her own granola on the side. She bagged it and started selling it at Brooklyn Flea, the same flea market where the Brothers Mast—and, for that matter, gobs of other artisanal food makers—started and went on to become the woman behind the granola juggernaut known as Early Bird Granola.

  Chef Fany Gerson opened Dough in Bed–Stuy in 2010, and her big, billowy, brioche-style doughnuts have spread across the city and are now available at dozens of third-party locations (including Smorgasburg, which is where we first sampled the bad boys). With delectable flavors like blood orange, hibiscus, and toasted coconut, inspired by Fany’s Latin American heritage, to know Dough is to love it.

  Naturally, Anarchy in a Jar supports local and family farmers—this is Brooklyn! A lesser credo just wouldn’t cut it. The small-batch condiments company was started in 2009 by Laena McCarthy and includes deliciously eclectic offerings like grapefruit & smoked salt marmalade, cherry balsamic jam, and beer mustard.

  CHAPTER 12

  Pounding Cookies by the Half Pound

  It’s crazy to look back at photos from those first few weeks and see how teeny the peanut was. Once we got through the initial hazing period and the hiccups of breastfeeding, she plumped right up and then became a bona fide chunker. Miraculously, I did not.

  I say that because when I finally turned my attention away from the peanut and to myself, I realized I was eating like a truck driver. I’d devour two breakfasts, two lunches, and in the late afternoon be overwhelmed by another wave of hunger so fierce that it sent me to the refrigerator, attacking the hummus and demolishing a sleeve of crackers until the peanut’s cries in the other room made me feel guilty enough to put the food down. At dinner, Andrew would be sated—like other well-balanced human beings—with one serving. After having seconds, I found myself feeling self-conscious about wanting thirds, so I’d take cover in the kitchen, ostensibly to do the dishes but really so I could stick my fork in the simmering turkey chili again and again while Andrew and the peanut cuddled in the living room. I couldn’t believe how insatiable I was. It was a relief to finally discover that the metabolic demands of breastfeeding require consuming an extra five hundred calories a day, thereby explaining my animallike impulses.

  And yet as the weeks went on, I was somehow dropping weight. Even as I got more brazen with my snacking—healthy hummus and almonds soon gave way to all manner of sugary, chocolaty, butter-laden treats—I was within striking distance of my prepregnancy weight. My stomach shrank back toward its previous incarnation. If I tried really hard, I could wiggle into my old jeans. Breastfeeding—I suddenly loved it! It gave me license to behave badly—very, very badly.

  At first, just due to proximity of my apartment and my own laziness, I’d run to the pharmacy or grocery store and get a bag of M&M’s (Pretzel! Peanut butter! Crispy! So many new varieties!). Not the diddly individual-sized bags at checkout, but the big bags that are usually shared among a team at the office. I’d get them home and promptly annihilate them in about an hour’s time.

  Before long, going out in the afternoon for a snack became the focal point of my day. Not only did it get me out of the apartment, which had become my whole 1,100-square-foot universe, but it also brought me even closer to the peanut. For now that I had figured out how to position all the straps and folds of the carrier, it was my baby gear of choice. I loved “wearing” her, feeling her beating heart against my own as we set off on walks through Brooklyn’s sloping streets. The neighborhood was so pretty with all the remaining yellow, red, and golden autumn leaves clinging to the trees and dusting the stoops. Feeling the peanut breathing against me made it all seem ever more romantic—the original vision I’d had of Brooklyn, feeling warm, connected, like I belonged there, was finally mine.

  Except now I was like a Neanderthal searching for and bringing meat back to the cave—my meat being tres leches doughnuts from Doughnut Plant, berry and almond tarts from Joyce Bakery, and Nutella cookies from Buttermilk Bakery. I didn’t even wait to get my haul home—I’d start eating my freshly baked conquest while walking past the perfectly aligned brownstones along one of the quieter side streets, fingers exposed to the brisk air and tingling, my nose red and runny, while my mouth got busy nibbling and licking. I was technically more of adult than ever, and yet I had regressed by any ordinary observation.

  I discovered another perk of breastfeeding—besides gluttonously stuffing my maw—was being relegated to the couch for a good chunk of the day. I understand why a lot of women feel trapped and frustrated on maternity leave, being stuck with their breasts out and hands occupied for hours when they’re used to kicking ass at the office. But I was more than content with a book, magazine, or crossword puzzle in one hand while I fed the peanut in the other (I had come a long way, mastering the breastfeeding positions the lactation consultant had taught me). And one habit just seemed to enable another. New to Instagram, I started cruising local foodies’ feeds, salivating over their posted photos of oozing cinnamon buns, dainty pastel macarons, and perfectly geometric black-and-white cookies. I’d click through a post, discover a profile, stumble upon a website, and fall into these massive Internet rabbit holes that were simultaneously enlightening and frightening. I had New York’s entire food-obsessed world at my fingertips. Every day there was a new discovery beckoning me to leave my living room.

  This was how I discovered City Cakes, home of the half-pound sugardoodle. I was shocked that in all my days of covering food and sweets for local magazines and newspapers, I hadn’t heard of this bakery or their outlandishly oversized cookies. But there they were on my little phone: enormous disks of perfectly formed cookie that appeared to be about the size of the peanut’s head. Instagram posts showed towers of multihued varietals, some the telltale color of red velvet, others that were ambiguous shades of brown. They all looked soft but crunchy, easily a half-inch thick. They all looked incredible. It wasn’t enough to just admire them from afar. Their massive, crackling edges and tender middles were too good to pass up. One gray day in December, I strapped the peanut snuggly to my chest and made my maiden voyage to the closet-sized subterranean bakery in Chelsea.

  • • •

  City Cakes opened as a custom cake business in 2008—just a few months before I left for Paris, which made me feel ever so slightly better about having been previously oblivious to it. Run by two chefs, Benny Rivera, the “artistic” one, and Marc Coolrecht, the “business” one, they were cruising right along for a couple years, churning out cakes in the shapes of guitars, chessboards, sailboats, and other fanciful commissions, in flavors like strawberry champagne, cinnamon swirl, and Caribbean brandy. In order to get more customers familiar with their cakes without having to order a custom creation, Benny and Marc decided to open a retail front.

  To begin, they offered cupcakes in their various flavors—red velvet, double chocolate, precious yellow cake—and threw in four kinds of cookies to round out their offering: chocolate chip, triple chocolate spice, oatmeal raisin, and peanut butter with Reese’s Pieces. While the cake business continued to thrive with customers like Jennifer Lopez and Fergie placing custom orders, and their masterful work being showcased everywhere from The Rachel Ray Show to InStyle magazine, their cookies quickly became fan favorites—especially once a third team member, Sarah Pleitez, came aboard and brought even more flavors.

  Sarah joined City Cakes in 2011 as an intern and quickly demonstrated a knack for creating recipes, despite not having a sweet tooth. “I didn’t even know what Reese’s Pieces were when
I started,” she confesses. This is something I do not understand—how could anyone not intimately know the whole Reese’s repertoire?—but it’s proven to be a nonissue. Sarah’s personal ambition and devotion to recipe development drove her to doubling City Cakes’ cookie roster without a dud yet.

  Sarah’s first introduction was the signature sugardoodle. Big, billowy, and buttery, sparkling with a generous coating of sugar crystals and cinnamon, it has the perfect savory-sweet balance that comes from creamed butter and sugar. When she created it, the bakery’s cookie menu was dominated by chocolaty options. She was looking to add something with a different flavor profile. Then, for the 2013 holiday season, she was playing with recipe ideas that would evoke nostalgia and home baking and struck upon the ginger spice cookie, a soft, sweet molasses number with the bite of ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg. It was so popular it stuck around beyond the holidays and became a year-round best seller. Then came the killer red velvet. Rich from cocoa, savory from a cream-cheese center, and crunchy from its sugar-dusted top, it gives red velvet lovers a whole new creation to die for.

  Sarah, Benny, and the City Cakes crew is constantly working with trends and seasonal inspirations and soliciting customer feedback and suggestions to come up with new flavors. But it’s hard to follow through on every idea because, as Sarah points out, “it’s an intense production. We can only have so many [cookies].” The bakery’s diminutive size limits their ability to experiment too much. Their custom cakes remain the driving force of their business and the cookie mania has to be capped at some point.

  When I went for the first time, I figured it wasn’t worth the hike from Brooklyn to just get one cookie. So I got three: the triple chocolate spice, killer red velvet, and sugardoodle. The bakery, a no-frills spot at the bottom of a rickety staircase on Eighteenth Street, packaged them in a box as if I were bringing them to a ladies’ tea. Instead, I devoured what amounted to a pound and a half of fresh baked goods before I even made it back to Brooklyn.

  Each flavor was familiar but unique and had a whole lot going for it: the force of spices that erupted from the triple chocolate spice, the creamy center hiding within the red velvet, and, my favorite, the billowy, sweet, touched-with-cinnamon sugardoodle. They were creative but not outrageous—traditional with a twist, if you will. Every bite had a satisfying crunch that gave way to a soft, just barely warm center. The ingredients and dough were balanced to decadent perfection, not overly sweet, not overdone, just a titch undercooked. With each one, I found myself committing to a new obsession.

  Meanwhile, the peanut remained asleep in her carrier, having fed before we left the apartment and been lulled to sleep by the train’s rhythmic motion. We were one bloated belly pressed to another, and she was oblivious to the soft rain of crumbs that fell all around her and her mama’s orgasmic delight. And neither was Andrew any the wiser that his wife was loose in the city, flaunting a dysfunctional relationship—with cookies.

  • • •

  So during those long days, did I miss work? Crave adult conversation? Want intellectual stimulation? Hell no. I was happy to spend my maternity leave watching Footloose on cable, eating my loot from the great outdoors, and cuddling with the peanut on the couch while the rest of the world schlepped to the subway in the snow.

  Think about it: for four months, I wore no makeup. I didn’t do my hair. I rotated between two outfits. I could eat what I wanted, when and where I wanted. I didn’t have to set the alarm for work or waste even one second diddling over what to wear. None of it mattered. It was women’s liberation of a whole new kind. When else would I ever have an excuse to live like that?

  My maternity leave marched on through the dead of winter, and it was a brutal one at that. Through the holidays and January, it was cold and blustery, with one snowstorm after another. But what did I care? There were days when I never even got out of my pajamas. Days that the longest trip I took was from the couch to the refrigerator. Days when I did my breastfeeding and laundry and crossword puzzles while binging on Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce, Love It or List It, and bad eighties movies while the peanut napped on my shoulder, snuggled into that heavenly nook. It was wonderful to give my brain a rest. It occurred to me this was the first time in two and a half decades, since my first job whipping up Oreo Blizzards at Dairy Queen, that I allowed myself to do nothing—though Andrew kindly reminded me that keeping the peanut alive every day was hardly “doing nothing.” Admittedly, it was a big job—the biggest and most important of my life—and when it wasn’t frustrating the hell out of me or scaring me to death, it was heaven. I was so content being warm and happy inside with our new baby girl, immune to the elements and the rest of the world outside.

  I was warm and happy for the other obvious reason: it was the second time in just a couple of years that I was head over heels in love.

  Falling in love with Andrew had been slow and steady. Wave after wave, getting bigger, deeper, and more profound until I was pulled under. With the peanut, it was an intense storm: lightning bolts; pounding elements; a fierce, overwhelming drive that scared me. I loved her until it hurt and I cried.

  Week by week, I watched in amazement as she developed before me. Her belly ballooned and her legs formed delicious rolls. She started smiling and cooing. Soon, her eyes would light up in recognition of my or Andrew’s face. I loved kissing her fuzzy, little head and stroking her insanely soft cheeks. Squeezing her thighs and tickling her knees. The peanut would lie on her activity mat and was soon reaching for the dangling apples and parrots above, or learning how to navigate the white bear rattle with her tiny matchstick fingers. I’d watch as her lips puckered in concentration and her legs kicked when she got excited. Every day, she seemed to be learning new tricks. As she did, we both became more confident—her in this big, new world and me in this big, new role. While I still obsessed over how many ounces of breast milk she consumed a day and diligently tracked how many hours she’d sleep at night in one go, at least I was no longer hallucinating or flailing. I came to understand that even if I felt clueless, I could trust that I would figure things out. I started relaxing and having more fun. I’d cranked up the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, dancing with the peanut held tightly in my arms, my emotions swinging with the beat, until suddenly my throat ached and I was swallowing back tears as I sang with the heavenly Karen O:

  Flow sweetly, hang heavy

  You suddenly complete me

  You suddenly complete me

  There was no going back. This little girl now owned my heart.

  • • •

  Those were my good, albeit emotional, days. There were plenty of rough ones too.

  Despite alternately reveling in my private feminist movement and acting like a moony teenager, parenthood was an enormous adjustment. Forty-plus years of independence and suddenly I was a slave to a baby. Yes, I got in crossword puzzles and became familiar with Instagram and ate with force and glee, but my life was no longer my own. As much time as I had, it was parsed into these impossibly distracted, abbreviated spurts where I had to be able to drop everything at a given moment to tend to the peanut. I couldn’t trot off to the gym or a movie, lose myself in a book, or even compose a coherent thought. I was cut off from friends, current events, and culture. And there was the added layer of not feeling like a writer.

  Even though I had this monumental new dimension to my life—wife and mother—it felt belittling to have nothing to do with writerly pursuits. There was no trolling New York’s restaurants and bakeries in the name of good reportage. No scheming to go to Sicily to write about the most luxurious spa treatments. No satisfying deliveries of the Sunday paper to see my byline. I had consciously pulled back from my freelance pursuits, but now I was so removed from this former life that I sort of even missed the rejection of pitching an article.

  Writing had become such a big part of my identity over the years. And yet there I was, not writing one lick of anything. Even more discon
certing, I didn’t want to. My ambition had vanished. I was suddenly taking pride in keeping up on the laundry, not New York’s restaurant scene. Did that mean I was no longer a writer? Would I be able to still land assignments if and when the urge to pitch struck again? I did my best to shove aside the fears that more than two decades of career building was for naught if I didn’t publish something, like, soon.

  • • •

  Of course it’s when you’re finally feeling competent, like you have a clue as to how to provide for your baby and are in a groove with their rhythms and needs, that you’re expected to go back to work. And God bless America, one of four countries in the world without paid parental leave laws. Saudi Arabia offers paid parental leave. China, Mongolia, and Haiti offer paid parental leave. African nations like Togo and Zimbabwe pay 100 percent of a woman’s earnings for fourteen weeks when they have a child. America offers nothing. So when our dear politicians are espousing family values, all they really care about is having women shut up and stay at home.

  Fortunately, a lot of companies, particularly in the tech sector, are creating their own generous policies. But the best our government has done is pass the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which guarantees your job if you take unpaid leave for up to twelve weeks for a family or medical reason. It’s something. But if you’ve ever had, held, or seen a twelve-week-old baby, you know how crazy it is to imagine that child being ready part with its mother. A twelve-week-old baby is a teeny, helpless thing. It’s not healthy, it’s not right, for the mother to go back to work so soon after childbirth.

  I received partial pay from my company for those twelve weeks protected by the FMLA, and I took another four weeks of unpaid time off so I could be with the peanut a wee bit longer. The last month proved to be so important, as it was the first time I had enough wherewithal to actually look ahead instead of drowning in the moment. I could see all the things besides breastfeeding and laundry that needed to be done. I had to figure out how to pump so I could create a stockpile of breast milk in the freezer, for when I was no longer at home to feed the peanut. I had to start engaging with the real world again, not just Instagram and HGTV. I had to get back into a professional mind-set and wardrobe. I had to warm up to the idea of socializing on a daily basis. I had to get a haircut. And most importantly, Andrew and I had to find a nanny, someone whom we did not yet know but would trust our baby’s life with.