Cherry-on-top: Kaitlyn Wong, a balcony in brooklyn

The baker and pastry sous chef on English muffins, Wu’s Wonton, Icelandic butter, and other recs. Plus, a selection of fancy jams.

If you’ve roamed Brooklyn in search of a sweet treat, there’s a chance you’ve had Kaitlyn Wong’s wares. The baker has turned out hundreds of rainbow cookies at Ciao, Gloria and was responsible for what have been hailed as life-changing scones (yes, scones) at Prima in Clinton Hill, where everything where her hands if not literally figuratively touched everything when she ran their pastry program. She also did a short stint at Hags in the East Village as a line cook. (“I have so much respect for them. I look back on it fondly, but it wasn’t for me.”)

For those who aren’t in New York, you may have glimpsed her sweet and savory creations on instagram or tried the recipes for them on her blog, which now lives on substack:

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Some highlights include…

• A sorrel pesto pasta with cannellini beans that skews the line between hearty and light and is an upgraded take on the Sqirl rice bowl, which to Kaitlyn’s surprise and scorn has no garlic.

• The aforementioned scones, comprising banana and buckwheat, wholesome and compulsively edible.

• And the pistachio chamomile cake, her top post for a reason. It was big hit amongst my friends and does not require a stand mixer thanks to its olive oil cake base).

These days Kaitlyn is the pastry sous chef at Le Crocodile in Williamsburg, one of the best restaurants in the city. She took some time from her busy schedule to talk to me about desserts, what’s in the literal secret sauce of Le Croc’s roast chicken—as I have likely mentioned many times before, I got married there on account of this dish—and bless us with a recipe for English muffins (highly underrated) that’s startlingly easy to follow.

What first got you into baking?  

My mom was always a really good cook. She made dinner every night and had a huge cookbook collection. For some reason I got really obsessive about it as a kid. My blueprint was Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: from My Home to Yours. That's the best book in baking anyone can buy, all of her recipes are just incredible. Then there was this Barefoot Contessa five-pack of Ina’s bestsellers. 

How did you get into pastry professionally? Did you have formal training?

No, I studied literature at NYU. When I moved here for school from California, my parents were like ‘you have to get a job, we're not just gonna give you pocket money!’ So I got a job at this donut shop. I had zero kitchen experience and literally nothing on my resume. I just went in with enthusiasm and they said yes. I trailed glazing donuts—and it was just so, so cool. It was my first job, and my first pastry job.

What was the hardest part of working in a real commercial kitchen space?

Definitely having to get there at 5am. Being a freshman in college while working weird baker hours was interesting to say the least. But it gave me a an segue into kitchens, which can be hard to break into. I feel like a lot of people want to work in food, but don't have a professional background. Kitchens are weird places and I'm glad I had that opportunity when I was still kinda young.

Is this shop still around?

I checked recently and sadly it isn’t. It was Doughnut Project in the West Village.

Their bone marrow+ chocolate ganache donut was iconic! Similarly you like to mash up different flavors, too, but in a different way. Like the pistachio chamomile rhubarb cake, which feels like a very Kaitlyn dessert. How do you come into your own sensibility?

When people are pairing flavors or coming up with things it’s very much ‘oh, this and this goes together, but this and this doesn't.’ I don’t like to be traditional about that. If you think of two things and they sound good to you, it's probably going to work. I just did a passion fruit and cacao nib ice cream at Le Crocodile. Everyone was in shock. And I said, ‘trust me, it's going to work.’ I’m a big fan of oranges + chocolate and citrus + chocolate so passion fruit was a no brainer. They all loved it.

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