I could honestly eat myself silly trying all of the alluring treats New York’s bakeries have to offer. I made it my quest to sample as many of them as I could on our recent trip to New York.

I did lots of lots of drool-worthy internet and Instagram research and took inspiration from a few Netflix cooking shows to create my NY sweets bucket list. Our plan was to visit these places for morning or afternoon tea stops while exploring the surrounding neighbourhoods, although we stumbled upon a few by pure chance.

I can’t help but salivate when looking back at these photos. Each place was memorable in its own way because they all had their own specialty. Here are all of the sweet treats we had on our trip!

Levain Bakery

This iconic bakery is famous for its cookies. They’re thick, chunky specimens that taste just as decadent as they look. There are four original flavours on the menu: chocolate chip walnut, dark chocolate chocolate chip, chocolate peanut butter chip and oatmeal raisin. Each cookie is baked fresh and comes warm so that the inside is gooey and the chocolate chips are still semi-melted. One bite of these and you’ll never want to go back to ordinary cookies again.

I think it’s the size and chunkiness that sets Levain Bakery’s cookies apart from others. The website says that they’re 2 inches thick – that’s a 5cm tall cookie! They’re slightly taller in the middle, which helps create a perfectly chewy, gooey inside and crispier edge.

Our favourite is the chocolate chip walnut cookie, which also happens to be the most popular flavour. Milk chocolate and walnuts are always a winning combination. Although there is a high ratio of chocolate chips to cookie dough, the walnuts help balance the sweetness of the cookie and add a nice texture to each bite. We could eat these again and again.

We also tried the dark chocolate chip walnut cookie. How good does this cross-section look?! This is not as rich nor as sweet as it looks thanks to the bitterness of the dark chocolate.

There are a few locations in New York but the original Levain Bakery is on West 74th Street. It’s a tiny shop nestled just below street level, and I’ve seen queues stretching along the street at times. We have tried re-creating their cookies at home but are yet to nail it.

Website: https://levainbakery.com/

Carlo’s Bake Shop

Anyone who loves cooking shows would know of Cake Boss, a show that follows the journey of Carlo and his family as they produce extravagant, out-of-the-ordinary cakes at their Italian bakery in Hoboken, New Jersey.

There is one Carlo’s Bake Shop in New York which is located just off Times Square. Having long been a fan of the show, I was super excited to try some of their pastries.

As with most of the bakeries we visited in New York, we had to wait in a queue to get inside. The shop itself is quite small with only a few sit-down tables. When you get to the front of the line, you can wander around the counters and gaze at the mouth-watering selection of pastries and cakes on offer.

We absolutely love Italian pastries so knew we had to try the cannoli and lobster tails. There are also lots of cookies, cupcakes and celebration cakes to choose from.

Let’s start with the Lobster Tails. These cone-shaped pastries consist of crunchy, thin layers of pastry and a light vanilla cream filling. The pastry is to die for – it’s so fresh and shatters upon each bite. We also love the chocolate hazelnut lobster tails, which are topped with nutella and have a lovely nutty flavour.

The cannoli are freshly made, with a crunchy shell and smooth, ricotta filling. I’m not used to chocolate chips in the filling but these were really yummy. The chocolate-dipped shells are a little thicker so I preferred the classic cannoli.

We were a bit disappointed that the éclair was a bit softer than expected, although the custard filling was excellent.

Website: https://www.carlosbakery.com/

Dominique Ansel Bakery

This was a bakery I couldn’t wait to go to. Dominique Ansel is famous for the creating the Cronut, a croissant-doughnut hybrid pastry.

When we arrive at the bakery in Soho in mid-morning we join the queue of people waiting outside. The shop is long and while there isn’t a lot of standing room inside, there are a few tables out the back where you can sit and enjoy your pastries.

Although the Cronut is their most famous pastry, there are lots of other goodies to choose from. There is a huge variety of croissants and puff pastry treats, eclairs and mini cakes. Everything looks gorgeous and very tempting.

There is only one flavour of Cronut available on the menu which changes every month. The flavour when we visit is Boston Cream Pie, which is filled with a layer of yellow cake ganache and pastry cream and topped with dark chocolate glaze. This Cronut is right up our alley – the filling is silky and creamy, and the combination of chocolate and vanilla is sublime. I’ve had cronuts in Sydney before but this is just next level. It embodies all the best bits of a croissant and a doughnut with its golden, sugar-coated crust and flaky layers.

We also try the DKA, which is their take on the butter-laden Kouign-Amann. It’s a flower-shaped pastry with a sweet, caramelised shell and buttery layers within – kind of like a crunchy, croissant scroll. Very addictive.

Website: https://www.dominiqueansel.com/

Lady M

Lady M is a New York cake shop that specialises in delicious mille crepe cakes. What I love about this shop is that is melds French pastry techniques with Japanese dessert flavours (one of my favourite dessert cuisines!). The cakes are made from layers of thin crepe which are stacked on top of each other and sandwiched with cream. Everything is simply but beautifully presented.

We went to the boutique in the Plaza Food Hall just south of Central Park and tried the Green Tea Mille Crepes. Just look at those layers! They’re so fine and uniform. I was in heaven eating this – it’s probably the best cake I’ve ever had. I loved the strong green tea flavour and the ratio of cream to crepe was spot on. The texture you get by stacking all of those layers of crepe is unlike any other cake. A must try for sure.

Website: https://www.ladym.com/

Milk Bar

If you’re a fan of Momofuku and sweets there’s a chance you would have heard about Milk Bar. The founder was a pastry chef at Momofuku before starting her own dedicated desserts shop. Milk Bar is known for its iconic creations such as colourful confetti birthday cake, compost cookies and cereal milk ice cream.

We went to the flagship Milk Bar Store in New York and spent a good 15 minutes in there looking at all of the baked goods and at the store. It’s a fun, colourful store.

I had the cereal milk ice cream and it definitely lived up to its name! It tasted just like cereal milk and conjured up nostalgic memories of cereal breakfasts.

Website: https://milkbarstore.com/

DO

Cookie dough is a really popular sweet treat in the U.S., but not so much in Sydney. D’Oh is a shop that sells different flavours of cookie dough by the scoop. We thought we’d give a it a try to see what the hype was all about and had a scoop of the chocolate chip cookie dough.

It tasted like… raw cookie dough. I wasn’t too sure if I liked the idea of eating cookie dough after trying this. There wasn’t much else to it and it seemed like there was missing something. Texture? Flavour? Cooked-ness? We ended up taking the rest of the dough home and baked it into cookies in the oven. Although I don’t think we’ll be having this again, it was good to tick it off the bucket list!

Website: https://www.cookiedonyc.com/

Zucker’s

Zucker’s is a homely bagel bakery and smoked fish shop with various locations scattered around New York. All bagels are hand rolled and boiled daily. There was one not too far from where we were staying so we would often go for a walk in the morning to get fresh bagels for breakfast.

There are so many different bagel/spread/smoked and cured fish combinations you can get here. In addition to regular cream cheese there are other cream cheese varieties like sun dried tomato and garlic, strawberry and jalapeno. There are also a number of tofu spreads. We loved the everything bagel, toasted and topped with a cream cheese schmear. The everything bagel is named so because it has a bit of every topping on top – poppy seeds, sesame seeds, garlic and onion flakes and salt. The cream cheese filling is very generous – there is so much of it that it just oozes out of the edges and through the bagel hole! We found that New York-style bagels in general were very filling and would often share one between two.

Website: https://www.zuckersbagels.com/

Stay tuned for more NYC eats!