Huascar & Company Bakeshop, NYC

New York has a lot of bakeries.  I have places I already love, and ridiculous lists of places I want to try.  I have a list targeted for cakes, another for laminated pastries, another for cinnamon rolls, another for cookies, etc, etc.  One category that doesn't get a lot of entries is pudding.  I adore pudding, of all kinds, hence the label on my blog for it.  Simple banana pudding, custards like crème brûlée, panna cotta, or flan, these all count.  I love them all.  So when a place has a few pudding-adjacent items on a menu, I pay attention.

Huascar & Company Bakeshop is primarily a bakery, with a large lineup of baked goods, all of which I'd be happy to try of course, but they aren't particularly at the tops of my lists for any of those items.  Their menu is extensive though, with a slew of flavors of cakes, cupcakes, and entremets.  Yes, like seemingly everywhere these days, they have a mango mousse that looks like a mango, a lemon ganache that looks like a lemon.  Dubai this and that.  They have cheesecakes and flans.  Cookies, brownies, and bars.  Many items incorporate Dominican flair, as the chef is from the Dominican Republic.  He competed on Food Network’s Sweet Genius and even won Food Network’s Cupcake Wars.

But I had my eyes on the pudding adjacent items, of which we ordered a slew for an event at my office.

Cheesecakes, Flans, Custards & Pies

Key Lime. $8.50.

"Graham cracker crust, fresh key lime custard, and whipped cream topped with lime zest and graham cracker crumbs."

Regular readers of my blog know that I tend to dislike lemon/lime desserts, and I downright loathe graham cracker crust / base, so, why on earth am I including a key lime item?

Simple: we had tons of these leftover, and people were taking just a few spoonfuls of each to try, so I was able to easily take a very small portion just to see if I liked it.  Spoiler: I did not, as expected.

Key Lime.

It was a fine item though, if you like these sorts of things.  The base was a layer of graham cracker crumble (not a crust, it was just loose, which is even worse to me, just, gritty sawdust that easily got mixed in).  The majority of the container was the key lime custard, thick, well set, very tangy.  Very not my thing, but the flavor and consistency were good.  The whipped cream was standard, and the zest on top was attractive and made the flavors pop a bit more.

I didn't care for it, but I have no real points of issue with it, just clearly not my preferences.

Passionfruit Coconut Tres Leches. $9. 

"Our tres leche cake, with a twist—soaked in an our virgin coquito mix, topped with homemade passion fruit jam, coconut whipped cream and sprinkled with toasted coconut."

Next up was the tres leches, which is something I like, but rarely love or get excited about in general.  I've had a lot of kinda mediocre tres leches, but rarely really bad tres leches, and rarely really great tres leches.  I think in my head it lives in the constant realm of things I like in theory, but don't ever get wowed by.

This one did come close to wowing me.  It was far better than any tres leches I'd had in several years but ... partially that is because it wasn't just any tres leches.   It was considerably more interesting than a standard tres leches, as coconut and passionfruit were the real attractions.  The basic formula of multiple milk soaked cake and whipped cream still applied, but otherwise, this was a pretty complex and flavorful dessert.  Also, I kinda think calling it a trifle may be more appropriate?  They do also make a more standard tres leches, spiked with rum.

The middle third of this was the cake, soaked not just in the standard three milks, but in coconut based coquito mix, so it was more flavorful than usual on its own (although I didn't really taste the booziness?). It was very moist, and the ratio of 1/3 cake to everything else made this eat really well.  Yes, it was soggy cake, but it was good.

On top was the coconut whipped cream, a far more substantial portion than what was on top of the key lime where that whipped cream was more of a garnish.  This was a full 1/3 of the dessert, equal ratio with the cake.  It was coconut flavored and had a great thick yet fluffy consistency.  It had a lot of shredded toasted coconut covering it as well, adding even more coconut flavor, lots of texture.  I could have been happy eating this sorta as a coconut cream pie, no cake required.

Below the cake was the passionfruit jam, where even more flavor intensity came from.  While the previous coconut flavors were strong, noticeable, the passion fruit was definitely the dominator.  The jam was so fruity, such concentrated tropical goodness.  Great for those who love passion fruit, and I appreciated that it didn't taste artificial.  It was sweet, but somehow not overly so.  This thick layer was about half the base of the dessert, and again, the ratio just made sense and made it eat so well.  There was a dollop on top of the whipped topping as well.

At the very bottom was a little more very soaked cake, almost so moist it was like pudding.

Overall I found this really easy to enjoy.  An excellent layered tropical trifle where every spoonful just made sense.  4/5.

The portion was large, easily 2 servings, maybe 3, which made the $9 price very reasonable.

Salted Caramel Banana Pudding. $8.25.

"Vanilla pudding with layers of caramelized spiced bananas, vanilla wafers & salted caramel sauce."

And finally, the one I was most excited for, the banana pudding.  Make that, salted caramel banana pudding.  Oh yes.  This took the basic banana pudding format and elevated it considerably (besides the kinda basic vanilla wafers on top, which sorta seems like a miss not to use house made ones?).

I had mixed feelings on this.  It was good, but borderline just too sweet.  I ended up adding a lot of tart blackberries, and regular less sweet whipped cream, to balance it out.  As it was served, it was just too much, even for someone who really loves sweets like me.  Maybe I just needed a black coffee or bitter red wine to pair with it?

Anyway, starting from the top, besides the aforementioned generic throwaway Nilla wafers, there was thick rich whipped cream, lots of it, sweetened, and drizzled with salted caramel sauce.  Very tasty, but even this topping was pretty sweet.

Banana Pudding.

Below that was a layer of the caramelized bananas that were really quite good, and a nice change from just standard sliced bananas in banana pudding / banana cream desserts.  They were nicely spiced, and were a good way to make the dessert less perishable too - I always find slightly brown fresh bananas a bit off putting, but here they were cooked down so this wasn't an issue.  However, this was a really sweet element as they were caramelized, and bananas are already pretty sweet.

After that a thick pudding (they said it was vanilla, but it really tasted banana to me), sweet but not cloying, great consistency, with vanilla wafers embedded within that basically turned into bites of soft cake and bothered me less than the ones on top.  And more salted caramel sauce, more caramelized bananas, more pudding, all kinda layered together in a not distinct fashion.

Put it all together and you had a number of winning elements, and it ate well with thick pudding, soft cake-like layers, sauce and bananas but ... every element was sweet, and some (the salted caramel sauce and caramelized bananas) were overly so.   I found it hard to eat large portions, without adding more plain whipped cream and other fruit.  Lower 4/5, as it was still very good, just, needed a bit less salted caramel sauce, or sweetness toned down in the pudding, to really knock it out of the park.