Daily News

Sweet Success
Cakes and brownies mean rising fortunes for this baker.
By ROSEMARY BLACK

In the tiny open kitchen of the Polka Dot Cake Studio on Bleecker St., fruit-filled, jewel-like tarts are made by hand, the buttercream is as light as a cloud and the brownies are called Better Than Brad Pitt. Even the air is sweet as baker-owner Ayse Dizioglu stands at a work table, weighting down trays of buttery tart shells with beans and readying them for the oven. After they're baked, they'll be filled with almond cream and fresh apricots.


Top tier: Ayse Dizioglu turns out hundreds of cakes each week at her small Bleecker St. shop.


Star attraction: The Better Than Brad Pitt brownie is a best seller at the Polka Dot.

At a nearby table, part-time pastry chef Steven Amsterdam is developing a new recipe for mocha buttercream. A visitor is impressed with its light consistency and clarity of flavor. The blackout cake, croissants and brownies in the front display case are tempting enough to break down the most resolved dieter.

Which is probably why, at a time when successful small bakeries are few and far between and people buy their cakes at Carvel or the supermarket, Dizioglu's 800-square-foot, 6-month-old custom cake studio is a sweet success. Besides selling between 300 and 400 blackout cakes a week (ditto for the coconut cake and the lemon cake), it supplies baked goods to catering companies and hotels, takes orders for personalized cakes for special occasions and keeps walk-ins satisfied with coffee and freshly baked croissants.

Unlike some entrepreneurs, Dizioglu wants to contain her business rather than expand it. "When we sell out of something, that's it for the day," she says. "We have the capacity to make 1,000 cakes a day, but limit ourselves. Our concept? To combine American style with European style, to be innovative and to serve only the very best."

Choc combo top choice

For Diziolgu, that means using Plugra butter, a Euro-style spread that contains 82% butterfat, as compared to regular butter's 80%. She bakes with Valrhona cocoa powder and Callebaut chocolate. She puts real lemon curd in her lemon cake so it tastes almost fluffy, like a lemon meringue pie.

The store's overall best seller is the Better Than Brad Pitt brownie, made with Valrhona and Callebaut chocolate, along with chocolate chips and walnuts, and topped with a chocolate ganache. "We think it is a good combination," she says, understating things a bit.

Before she opened Polka Dot, Dizioglu ran a bakery in Istanbul, Turkey, where she was born. She had studied sociology in college in Turkey, and says her parents are still surprised that she went into the food biz. But she had always loved to bake and after graduation she got into the business. She loved it so much that she persisted in her goal of getting her own place. The bakery she opened in Istanbul specialized in American cheesecake, a popular new trend in that city, she says.

A longstanding dream of wanting to live in New York was the impetus to move here and attend the Culinary Institute of America in 1999. Her boyfriend, Ugur Koyluoglu, also Turkish, was in the process of getting his Ph.D. from Princeton. After finishing their studies, they moved to Manhattan, and the two married last year.

In addition to her fulltime job at a catering company, she began to make cakes on a freelance basis. The couple decided that they wanted to open their own bakery; he would be her financial partner, and she would run it.

The hopes of starting up her own place in NYC eluded her at first, but last year she and Koyluoglu began looking for a spot. "I walked around the neighborhood for three months," she said. "I knew we wanted a place either in SoHo or the Village. We were about to lease another place and we couldn't make up our minds. When we saw this place, we knew we wanted it. Once you find the right place, it is easy to decide." They signed the lease in May; the bakery opened in August.

Next came an intense period of revamping and redecorating. "It had been very rustic, and we put vanilla ice cream paint on the walls," she said. "It took us months to get it ready. We had to break down walls. I was a full-time construction worker!" Besides the light, buttery colors, the brick-walled space features wicker baskets, marble café tables, cookbooks and plenty of wood touches.

In addition to Dizioglu, who developed the concept and the business plan and who has spent the past 13 years in the food business, the business began with Judiaann Woo and Paulette Goto as pastry chefs. Woo, first in her class at the French Culinary Institute, has since moved on to another job. Goto, who also graduated first in her class from the FCI and who has worked at Le Cirque with Jacques Torres, is still a cake designer. Steven Amsterdam, who besides his baking duties holds down a job as a book designer for Knopf, is an FCI grad with a flair for recipe development.

Munching till midnight

There is a staff of nine, plus four interns, all aspiring bakers who are enrolled in or have recently finished culinary school and want on-the-job training. They receive a stipend to cover lunch and transportation, but no salary. "You have to take care of them more than you would another employee," Dizioglu says. "You can't just leave them on their own."

Most interns rack up 60 hours before moving on, she says. Dizioglu herself puts in 12- to 14-hour days, working from 8 or 8:30 in the morning until well past 10 at night. The bakery is supposed to close at 10:30 p.m. on weekends and at 8 p.m. other nights, but sweet tooths frequently come in at closing time and want to sit and relax with a pastry, and she doesn't have the heart to ask them to leave.

"So we mostly close around midnight," she says. "People buy things at different times of day. In the morning it's mostly croissants and Danish and coffee cakes. Later on, they buy mostly individual cakes. Brad Pitt brownies don't have a set time. People buy them early in the morning for breakfast or late at night."

Other big sellers are the 24K carrot cake, tiramisu chocolate cups, individual bread puddings and passionfruit cakes. And the shop specializes in customized cakes; prices range from $18 for an undecorated birthday cake for six all the way up to $260 for an 18-inch cake serving 90 to 110 people. Cakes decorated with fresh flowers cost slightly more.

"We don't freeze anything here," Dizioglu says. "Everything is fresh. I feel like I am living my dream, designing and baking cakes for any celebration you can think of."

Originally published on January 16, 2003