Angela Rosario poses in front of her creations in her shop on Knickerbocker Avenue. — Photos by Scarlett Lindeman

It all started as a hobby. Angela Rosario liked to bake cakes at home, to eat and share with family and friends. She took a couple of cake decorating courses, learned to pipe frosting and smooth edges. When her son Euclides started selling her cakes by the slice at his meat market on Knickerbocker Avenue the clientele clamored for more. “Our house turned into a bakery,” says Euclides, showing off photos of his mother’s creations on cake stands set around their living room.

For the past seven years, Mrs. Rosario has operated out of her own space, Angela’s Bakery, to bake, decorate, and consult consumers in need of sweets. Her family runs the bakery counter, full of pastries and snacks, like quipe, fried nuggets of bulgur wheat with spicy beef centers and bready doughnuts filled with pudding.

	Angela’s Bakery 717 Knickerbocker Avenue Mon-Sat 9am-7:30pm, Sun 9am-1:30pm Whole cakes: $17-95, Pastries: $1-3
	Angela’s storefront on Knickerbocker. Click to see more.

On a recent weekday morning, customers were flipping through books full of cake snapshots, trying to decide on colors and styles while locals sipped tea and nibbled dense bread pudding and warm empanadas.

“It gets crazy on Saturdays. I don’t even have time to eat,” says Maggie, Angela’s niece, who works the counter and decorates, too.

Whatever the occasion — birthday, wedding, or baby shower, her cakes can be ordered in any shape or size.

“It takes a lot of time,” says Euclides, to learn the delicate art of cake decorating; he laughs, “and a lot of mistakes.”

Most of the cakes are shellacked with a thick marshmallow-white meringue frosting, a Dominican technique that keeps the cakes moist and gooey, the yellow rounds sandwiching guava and pineapple fillings. There is a fluffy yellow cake doused in caramel sauce that they call tres leches (though not the traditional sugary milk-soaked confection), Dominican-style red velvet, and chocolate, all divvied out in a unique way. The cakes are cut so a CD-sized circle of cake is left on the platter, slices plucked out like petals from a daisy. If your timing is right, the center piece will be yours — “It’s your lucky day when you get that slice, it’s the best one,” says a counter worker.

If this all sounds like a surge in blood glucose — most of the desserts are shockingly sweet – yuca rellena, a soft yellow submarine of the mashed tuber stuffed with beef is the closest you can come to a savory Twinkie.