The most charming baker in Paris

Christophe Vasseur confesses: “I’ve always been good with my hands.”

Add this to the fact that he wanted to quit school at the age of 12 to become a baker—who were like magicians to him, “transforming something so simple into something so good and beautiful with their hands.”—and it makes sense that he’s running one of the most esteemed and delicious bakeries in town: Du Pain et des Idées.

Where to begin? With the bread? (Bonne idée!)

There’s the famous pain des amis, a wonderfully slightly nutty flatbread that is now served at Alain Ducasse’s Plaza Athénée restaurant.

Le Rabelais, a dense brioche with saffron, honey and walnuts.

The mini paves, jammed with deliciousness like sundried tomatoes or spinach and goat cheese.

But really, it’s all about the sweets, isn’t it?

Just look at his viennoiseries: millions of layers of crisp and flaky dreaminess.


They take 34 hours to make. Of course they do, he makes his own (divine) pastry dough.


The chausson aux pommes, made with real apples, not minced jam.

And, my favorite, the tendresse aux pommes, a dense brioche flan with raisins and apples and cinnamon.


Greedy me, I am already plotting my return visit so I can get my own hands on more.

I'll swallow that

“I’m a soy bean-eating, recycling-devoted, vintage clothes-wearing, used Volvo-driving, low-carbon-footprint person in the first place. Sometime during the Bush years, that administration’s intense assault on the environment left me feeling that as a business owner with a large and loyal customer base, I had a responsibility to begin talking about the environment.”

Go, Maury! Here’s to the New York-based, French-trained, bi-coastal pastry chef who’s now sharing his good morals and gut-busting cookies at a third location.

5 nostalgic sugar rushes

I was so excited when I read that The Redhead, a restaurant that came highly recommended from Cheryl, had salted caramel Ho Hos for dessert. But of course when I went and scoped out the menu, they were gone. In my subsequent need for some nostalgic sugar, I share with you five other childhood snacks that can hit the sweet spot:

Murray’s Ring Ding
“Moist devil’s food cake stuffed with cream and tucked inside a dark chocolate shell.” Take that, Drake’s!

Bouchon’s Nutter Butter
About five times the size of the original cookie, Bouchon’s interpretation sandwiches whipped, airy peanut butter cream inside two oat-filled peanut butter cookies. It’s a real nutter.

Milk & Cookie’s Oreo
But the way this West Village bakery describes it—a vanilla creamed filled chocolate wafer cookie—there’s nothing Nabisco about it.

Trois Pommes’ Hostess Cupcake
Park Slope’s Trois Pommes doesn’t just make a “Hostess CupCake,” it makes the “Mostest Cupcake”: a dense chocolate cupcake with an espresso cream center.

Sarah Magid’s Twinkies
Er, “Goldies.” Pastry chef Sarah Magid changed the name of her organic gold-dusted, dark chocolate ganache-covered, chocolate sponge cake treats that are filled with either organic vanilla or espresso whipped buttercream. Wha???

V-Day countdown: Vere

I love that a gazillion different studies have proven dark chocolate's health benefits (lower blood pressure, improved blood flow, reduced cholesterol levels, etc., etc.). And that a company like Vere (started by Kathy Moskal, who, back in the day co-founded Hue tights, ladies) espouses health and deliciousness.

A few things to note about their chocolate:

• It's 70% and 75% cacao content chocolate made from single varietal heirloom "flavor beans".

• Chocolate bars are USDA Certified Organic.

• There are no artificial preservatives, additives, chemicals or sugar.

And, all of this good stuff is being wrapped into their special Valentine's chocolates. Check out their solid hearts in three amazing flavors: raspberry, coconut and fig & fennel. Yes, please!

12 West 27th Street between 6th Avenue and Broadway, 6th Floor
212.279.4448

Take Two

Birdbath Bakery spreads wings, heads westward.

Is it Build a Green Bakery? Or Birdbath Bakery? Or is this naming business trickery to ratchet up buzz? Does it matter? No, so long as the cookies and scones and muffins and croissants remain so tasty (and the ingredients, organic).

The City Bakery's second Birdbath offshoot is open in the West Village. Which means candied ginger scones, raspberry bran muffins, pretzel croissants, and chocolate chip cookies, served in eco environs, can be found twice as easily.

Pedal your bike over and get on the green bandwagon. It's more delicious than you ever imagined.

Birdbath
145 Seventh Ave South at Charles Street
646.722.6565

verē yummy

Evolved chocolate for ethical beings. (Wait—it's much more delicious than *that* sounds.)

What has less sugar than an apple, more antioxidants than two pounds of broccoli, and more fiber than a slice of whole wheat bread? Oh, and tastes more heavenly than any of those good-for-you foods, as well as many desserts?

That would be verē chocolates, my friends.

Just entering its second year of business, and founded by the same mastermind of HUE tights (you know you used to wear them), Kathy Moskal's high-quality, low-sugar, simple, sophisticated, rich, and luscious chocolate line is, in a word, divine.

The 75% dark chocolate bars are made from sustainably-grown, Rainforest Alliance-approved cocoa beans from the Ecuadorian Rainforest. Velvety ganaches are made with cream and butter sourced from Ronnybrook's local, grass-fed dairy cows. And wafers, tiles, and clusters—products names, those are—have decadent ingredients like roasted nuts, Cognac, Earl Grey tea, and pink peppercorns. So good are these products, you can eat them for breakfast. (Repeat: you can now eat chocolate for breakfast.)

verē won't spike your blood sugar into orbit, won't clutter your conscience with sad images of migrant workers and destroyed rainforests, and, unless you down a box of truffles in one sitting, shouldn't make you feel guilty. And even if you do feel guilty, there's enough good going on so you should get over it quickly. verē, verē quickly.

Check out Factory Fridays.
verē chocolates
12 West 27th Street b/w Sixth Ave and Broadway

Smart Cookie

Snacking our way to a more sustainable future.

Before going to Build a Green Bakery, a minute eco-friendly spot in the East Village, it’s worth visiting their web site. Buildagreenbakery.com explains how the floor is cork, the walls are colored with milk paint (“We’re a bakery, what could make more sense?”), and both the cash register and light fixture are throwbacks to previous generations. In short, it’s a “green” business. But it’s quite clear the cookies, made with certified organic flour and other natural ingredients, don’t suffer for the principles.

Artfully displayed atop a recycled denim and bamboo serving table, everything appears as decadent as a sugar junkie could hope for. There, behind the luscious mixed berry scones and squat blueberry corn muffins, stacked between the oatmeal raisin and reverse chocolate chip cookies, is the quintessential afternoon snack: the chocolate chip cookie ($2).

As cookies go, these are monstrous. About five inches in diameter, they’re flat, golden and studded with, not chips, but blocks of rich chocolate. With each bite, you can taste the butter and brown sugar banding together to deliver a perfect, chewy texture. Complementing the soft middles, the edges are hardened just so.

Cookie connoisseurs might recognize these juggernauts as sneakily similar to City Bakery’s. They wouldn’t be wrong. Build a Green Bakery is a project of the Manhattan giant known for its chocolaty treats — a project that should fly with both sweet and organic purists.

Build a Green Bakery
223 First Avenue
646.722.6565