Two Little Red Hens is my favorite bakery in New York. They rarely make a misstep, and they make wonderful goodies every day. I have a lot of respect for the opinions of the Serious Eats New York team, and I feel validated that they love this bakery as much as I do. They named it one of their top 10 American-style bakeries in NYC.
Their cupcakes are the best I’ve had in NYC and were ranked #2 in Serious Eats NYC Cupcake Roundup (#1 was Baked all the way out in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and I still haven’t made it there yet). Their Brooklyn Blackout Cupcake was #1 for chocolate cupcake in the same competition - moist, delicious chocolate cake, rich fudge frosting, and chocolate pudding filling. It’s one of my favorite desserts anywhere. Their cheesecake is delicious - not too heavy or cheesy. This was ranked Serious Eats #1 cheesecake in NYC. They make delicious coffee cake and bundt cake and their sticky buns look amazing, but I haven’t tried them yet. I also long to try their pies, which are supposed to be excellent, but are not available by the slice.
I wandered into 2LRH today to see people eating a new swirly brown and black cupcake I had most definitely seen before, and knew I would have to check it out. This new cupcake is their Peanut-Butter Fudge Cupcake. It looks like their Marble Cupcake because of the swirled chocolate and peanut butter frosting, but it’s actually closer to the Brooklyn Blackout Cupcake. Instead of a chocolate pudding frosting, the filling is peanut butter. This is a scrumptious cupcake. I like chocolate and peanut-butter, but I’m not one of those people (and I know many) who think chocolate and peanut butter is a combination of the gods. Even so, I thought it was delicious - for those who adore this combination, it’s a must-have.
One of my favorite things about NYC is the prevalence and success of bakeries - bakeries have disappeared from so many smaller towns and cities as people learned to go to the mega-supermarket for all their needs. It was the end of specialized shopping - separate stops at the butcher, cheese shop, bakery, etc. The rise of dessert mixes made homemakers’ lives easier, but it meant that many people grew up without being accustomed to eating home baked goods from scratch. It’s hard to miss what you don’t know. As a result small bakeries increasingly went out of business and became harder to find, but NYC experienced a resurgence in the 1990s (starting with City Bakery in 1990) and is now a city of bakeries - and Two Little Red Hens is one of its best.
Two Little Red Hens is located at 1652 Second Avenue between 85th and 86th Street. It is close to the 4,5, and 6 86th Street subway stop. Open Weekdays 7am-8pm; Sat 8am-8pm; Sun 8am-6pm.
