Company description
The Underground Bakery is a Full-Service Bakery in the Heart of Cape Cod. Serving Cakes, Sweets, Chocolate and Biscotti baked on site with The Underground's original recipe, all from scratch
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- Editorial Text 1
- Easter pie Cape Cod Times (Hyannis, MA) - April 7, 2004 Author: LAURIE HIGGINS Alyson Bucchiere grew up with the luscious Italian specialties that mark the Easter season: ricotta pie, lemon-pistachio cake, crostata, scones, anise cookies and, of course, biscotti. Now she and her crew at Buckies Biscotti and Co. in Dennis Village are making those Italian treats for people here on Cape Cod. Bakery owner Bucchiere incorporates her Italian heritage into her treats, and has special recipes and traditions for holidays. "Food and holidays were really big and it was always something we looked forward to. My dad's from a family of only three brothers and sisters but his mother had 14 brothers and sisters, so all the aunts and their daughters, everybody made cookies. We always had great desserts and real traditional ones for the holidays, like all the anise things on Easter and the ricotta pie," Bucchiere says. This year Bucchiere is offering several Easter specialties at her store, starting with a selection of specialty cakes, ranging from an elegant lemon pistachio cake, to colorful spring cakes with flowers and butter cream frosting tinted in pastel colors, to whimsical coconut basket cakes with basket weave frosting, ribbons and a decorative handle topped with chocolate dipped peeps. For wow appeal, the coconut bunny cake is a fun choice. The cake is bunny-shaped with cannoli shells for ears and can be purchased alone or in a decorative basket for those who want to use it as a centerpiece as well as dessert. Instead of traditional fruit pies, Bucchiere makes Italian crostata and the Easter menu features a raspberry peach crostata. "Crostata is an Italian rustic pie and it's usually open-faced. We started doing them and we called them crostata and people couldn't figure them out. The crostata dough is so different than pie dough because crostata dough has eggs, milk and butter in it and no shortening whatsoever so its really rich. What we ended up doing was making it look like a pie. We put lattice topping on it," she says. Recognizable ricotta Thanks to the popularity of the HBO series "The Sopranos," Bucchiere says customers know about ricotta pie, another Italian specialty. "Ricotta Pie is such a tradition. People will buy it and say 'oh my grandmother used to make it and no one knows how to make it anymore.' I sell a lot of ricotta pies. Its one of my signatures." Pastry chef Laurie Decost also uses family recipes as the base of her creations. She will be making strawberry tiramisu cheesecake - a variation of her mother's cheesecake recipe. Cookies for Easter include almond macaroons, anise cookies with a sugar glaze and sprinkles, lemon thumbprints and champagne cookies, a pastel-colored shortbread cookie that is rolled in sprinkles. Another popular choice is colorfully decorated sugar cookies in with Easter themes such as tulips and butterflies. Biscotti flavors for Easter include almond, anise, lemon and coconut. "Everything is really delicious because we use pure ingredients. So when people comment on how good the product is, it's because we use quality ingredients and we're pretty conscientious about how we make a recipe," she says. Bucchiere's recipes come from a variety of sources. When she left her family's bakery, she took a book of recipes that included some from really old bakeries in Boston. "I've worked in so many kitchens and there are so many recipes that people have given me that I've kind of tweaked and redeveloped. Laurie went to culinary school so she uses a lot of her professional baking books as bases." Being creative and playing with recipes is how they keep the business fresh for both themselves and the customers. And if something they try doesn't work out, they have a contingency plan that guarantees customers will love it - dip it in chocolate. "If we try something and we're not really happy with how it comes out, we dip it," she says. Bucchiere says presentation is important too. Many people buy the cookies as gifts so they package them in a white box wrapped with colorful ribbons. But one item she does not recommend buying pre-made is cannoli. "I'm not going to sell you cannoli today to bring to someone tomorrow because they're not going to be any good," she says. Instead she gives customers a cannoli pack with a pastry bag full of the filling and the cannoli on the side so they can pipe the filling in just before serving. Growing up with food Bucchiere grew up in the food business. Her father is Sicilian and had a family business called Bucci's Market in Everett. It was the first of many such markets. "My family started businesses, got them going, made them shine and then let them go," she explains. After years of traveling and working at other locations, Bucchiere decided to join one of her family's businesses, Newbury Street Bakery and Deli in Reading. She had worked in retail management for years and wanted a change, so she decided she wanted to bake. She is rueful about her choice to specialize in biscotti. "Have you ever made biscotti? It is so much work," she says. But it is also a nice niche product that caught on. After doing the Boston Food Show at the Bayside Expo, the business got a huge response from the Cape, so Bucchiere bought a refrigerated truck and started a distribution business selling her products wholesale. A couple of years later she decided to move back to the Cape where she had lived 11 years earlier and start a wholesale business. She named the business Buckie's after her grandfather whose name was Sebastian but everyone called him Buck because no one could remember how to pronounce his last name correctly. "I hung a sign five years ago and I got people knocking on the door saying, 'do you have anything to sell?' So the next summer I bought my little display case and the next summer I bought a refrigerated case," she says. She added coffee and cappuccino as a way to compliment her wholesale business with retail and was surprised by the direction it took. "It has completely switched and this (has) became a retail store. I really wanted to be a coffee shop and we turned into a bakery. My business plan really went in the opposite direction of what I intended to do," she says. The store has now doubled in size and the next direction Bucchiere plans to explore is building a mail order business selling Italian cookie boxes and biscotti boxes through her website, www.buckiesbiscotti.com. Bucchiere now has six employees and she says they work well as a team because everyone has a specialty. Bucchiere still bakes all the biscotti herself. Laurie Decost is the pastry chef and specializes in baking and decorating all the cakes. Sara Humphrey started out as a customer and now takes charge of the front counter and is known to make the best cappuccino. Kyle Handle is the resident chocolate fiend and is very creative with the dipping machine. Alissa Lesperance is the cookie artist and Sharon Kaestner is helping develop the website. Buckies Biscotti and Co. is open seven days a week during the winter from 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 6:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sundays.
- Payment Accepted
- Traveler's Check, American Express, Cash, Discover, MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Cash, Discover, MasterCard, Visa
- Rating
- 75% of 24 people liked it on Urbanspoon
- Email
- [email protected]
- Sorry
- No internet orders at this time
- Most Cakes And Special Orders
- 48 hours minumum notice
- Wedding Cakes
- 30 days minimum notice
- Web Site
- http://theundergroundbakery.com/
