Last Saturday I left the cold and foggy summer days of northern California for the muggy and steamy heat of New York City.  Except, upon arrival, New York did not at all live up to its stereotypical weather forecast.  For the past 20 years, the empire state has reliably sweated and burned me each and every summer.  So of course, the summer San Francisco lives up to being the coldest winter locale during the months of June and July—thank you Mr. Twain—New York decides to dump rain from her overcast skies.

It was a veritable flood.  Not a generous sprinkling, where some but not all would look outside casually during breakfast and pronounce, “Darling, it’s raining.” But a downright, plaster your clothes to the front of your body, rain. The kind of rain that creates a slick on the street and then continues to divot that puddle with a sheet of raindrops.

Thankfully, the City is ever equipped with coffee shops and bakeries, to placate delicate Californians.

Most specifically, the Two Little Red Hens bakery and the Luna Café on the Upper East Side.   At Luna Café, the mochas are phenomenal and one can enjoy watching the rain from the comfort of a leather couch in an almost entirely glass storefront.  However the Two Little Red Hens, of Turtle Bar Fame, is a bakery that I have to restrain myself from visiting more than once during a day.  It’s requires daily trips for mochas, for Brooklyn Blackout Cakes and Cupcakes, for Lemon Bars, peanut butter pies, Boston Cream Pies, Cookies, scones…

I can’t help myself.  Especially when it’s raining.

Above are the Boston Cream Pie and Marble Mini Cupcakes. We arrived at the bakery a little past 3 o’clock and they were already running low on my favorites…

Below is my grandfather on his 90th birthday, with a Brooklyn Blackout Cake from the Two Little Red Hens.  As you can see, he too is shocked that he turned 90 years old.