Huckleberry as adventurous as ever

April 5, 11:25 PMLA Bakery ExaminerGrace Parra

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Burrata. Pousset. Kouign Amann. Pastries, or U.N. Secretary-Generals? Today’s Tom Sawyer would hardly recognize the names of many of the most winning treats on the menu at Huckleberry Bakery. I’ll admit that I embraced several on curiosity of the names alone, which proved a much more winning gamble than Spam Gmails I’ve opened under similar pretexts (Yhezohjz and Rkeat lied when they told me they are African princes with the sum of $10 Million dollars in US cash waiting for me to claim).

Super blurry Maple Bacon Biscuit.

Lemon Pousset arrives in a chilled glass, a cream-colored pudding resembling a facial lotion for the Teri Hatcher set. Dotted with berries, the pousset slides daintily into one’s spoon upon first dip, eager to conform to the boundaries of a more aggressive shape. It eats like a pudding, but it’s so much more delicate – a sprightly zest of lemon prevails throughout, as crisp and refreshing as a sip of lemonade.

Much richer is the Salted Caramel, a stocky square of butterscotch-colored goo gleaming atop crumbly graham cracker. If your dream food is a candy bar baked inside a pie crust, you have met your match (and you also might be Willy Wonka). It’s like Twix without the chocolate and with a quirky thimbleful of salt sprinkled atop.

The real must-eats at Huckleberry are the Maple Bacon Biscuit and the Kouign Amann. The former is not nearly as cacophonous as one might expect. Pork products and baked goods can collide harmoniously (see: corn dogs, McGriddles), but they’re risky – too much bread, you lose the novelty; too much meat, you get creepy meat-bread. The magicians at Huckleberry marry a flaky, buttery biscuit with subtle hunks of bacon. Bacon can be a manly, assertive taste, but this bacon is presented as a post-Shrew Kate to the biscuit’s stern but comforting Petruchio.

The sweetest three bites you will take at Huckleberry belong to the quizzically named Kouign Amann. I am intimidated by the sequence of uninterrupted vowels and silent letters, but am utterly charmed by what a DNA test will prove is the child of a glazed donut and nut-free baklava. Honey and cinnamon caress light flakes of dough in a palm-sized package, so sweet and endearing you’ll believe anything he tells you. Even after Citibank convicts him of electronic mail fraud (looking at you, Yhezohjz).