The village of Haverstraw sits on the western shore of Haverstraw Bay, the widest a part of the Hudson River, about 35 miles north of New York Metropolis. Downtown, locals greet one another on cramped sidewalks as they cross out and in of two- and three-story brick storefronts: the Quisqueya Sports activities Membership, the place males congregate for vigorous domino tournaments; Empanadas Monumental, the place households go for the bolitas de yuca, yaroa, and quipes marketed on the restaurant’s neon signage; and Ortiz Cigars, the place folks can get a style of Tamboril, the small Dominican cigar-making city the place a lot of Haverstraw’s residents come from.
At present, two-thirds of Haverstraw’s residents are from Latin America. The city has lengthy attracted migrants searching for work in factories, together with Europeans and Southern Black People within the brickyards on the flip of the twentieth century and Puerto Ricans and Dominicans within the garment business within the Nineteen Fifties. Dominicans, particularly these from Tamboril, arrived in additional important numbers starting within the Nineteen Eighties and got here to kind the cultural core of the city.
Over the a long time, pleasure all the time swelled when a compatriot arrived from Tamboril, however in 2000, when phrase unfold that the most recent newcomer on Most important Avenue was Vilma Lopez, of us had been salivating. The sharp younger lady with distinctive caramel hair and a crimson lipstick smirk was the granddaughter of Doña Lucía Reynoso, a beloved Tamboril repostera, or pastry chef. Lopez was bombarded with inquiries wherever she went—within the salon chair, on the bodega money register, and on the entrance steps of neighbors’ properties. Everybody had the identical query: “Are you able to make your grandmother’s bizcocho?”
It’s not that bizcocho Dominicano was onerous to come back by in Haverstraw on the time—dozens of reposterías and plenty of extra dwelling bakers all through the Northeast produced the moist, ethereal pound cake with tropical fillings—however solely a slice of Doña Lucía’s at a affirmation, marriage ceremony, or quinceañera had the facility to make their dwelling on the Hudson really feel extra just like the one they left behind on the Río Licey. The cake’s mild, buttery crumb sits on the tongue as flippantly as a drop of dew on a leaf, and the filling captures the essence of pineapple or guava in a brilliant jam.
Happily for Haverstraw’s Tamborileños, Lopez had been baking Doña Lucía’s bizcocho since she was a younger lady. She grew up spending evenings at her grandmother’s home, piping suspiro (meringue frosting) into tons of of multicolored sugar flowers. “It wasn’t the best job,” she remembers. “The pastry luggage we had had been a lot more durable to squeeze than those we’ve now.” When Lopez was 14, her grandmother despatched her to apprentice with a cake decorator within the massive metropolis of Santiago, after which she grew to become a fair larger asset to Reynoso’s booming bizcocho enterprise. Lopez says, “After all, I needed to be out with my mates, however I didn’t like seeing her work so onerous, so I helped.” Typically, Lopez would break free to play volleyball on the native courts, the place she finally met her future husband, Raymundo Lopez.
Vilma and Raymundo married on Christmas Day in 1982. He moved to Washington Heights in New York Metropolis just a few years later. Whereas the couple was aside, Vilma would mail him bizcocho in tins. She and their two youngsters joined him completely in 1998. After arriving within the U.S., Vilma returned to what she knew greatest: she began making truffles once more in a repostera’s tiny condo on 163rd Avenue (nicely, first she washed dishes for the lady, then she made truffles) whereas Raymundo labored varied manufacturing unit jobs. Two years later, mates satisfied the household to maneuver to Haverstraw, and Vilma started her personal bizcocho dwelling bakery.
The Lopezes’ story might sound acquainted to numerous Dominican immigrants. Like many others, they got here to New York Metropolis throughout the largest wave of migration from the Dominican Republic between the early Nineteen Eighties and the late ’90s—whereas U.S.-backed authoritarian Joaquín Balaguer was in cost. New immigrant males struggled to assist their households with jobs within the precarious manufacturing and repair industries, and ladies did what they may to select up the slack. Even ladies with skilled coaching confronted language, racial, and different socioeconomic obstacles, which frequently compelled them to return to historically devalued home labor.
Within the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s, just a few Dominican ladies had been instrumental in serving to professionalize and monetize this labor, particularly cooking and repostería. In Santiago, Doña Ligia de Bornia taught repostería courses out of her home, which is the place Vilma’s grandmother first discovered to make bizcocho. Bornia went on to turn into a prolific cookbook writer and meals present host. In Santo Domingo, repostera and feminist activist Miriam de Gautreaux began the primary faculty for female home coaching within the nation, La Escuela Laboral María Trinidad Sánchez (named for an early Dominican freedom fighter). Based on a 2023 article in El Caribe, “Most nice Dominican reposteras went by her courses…by [those] programs, Dominican bizcocho was launched to the USA, the place it grew to become probably the most in-demand truffles and led to the proliferation of Dominican American reposterías.”
Between 2003 and 2006, Lidia Marte, an anthropologist on the College of Puerto Rico, adopted a number of Dominican ladies as they established themselves culturally and economically in New York. One lady she shadowed, Fifa, cooked for a Washington Heights meals truck throughout the day and, like Vilma, supplemented her household’s earnings by making bizcochos late into the night time. She stated, “I discovered to make truffles right here, watching a girl who taught me. I cook dinner as a result of it jogs my memory of my land.” Marte’s work reveals how for Dominican ladies like Fifa and Vilma, recipes grew to become a way of propagating cultural and financial life on new soil.
In 2011, the Lopezes expanded their home-based business right into a full-service, brick-and-mortar repostería: Vilma’s Bakery. Raymundo now not needed to work manufacturing unit jobs, and the bakery rapidly grew to become probably the most widespread reposterías within the area. When Haverstraw’s annual Dominican Independence Day parade rolls round, everybody calls Vilma. When Yankees gamers and veterans (a lot of whom are Dominican) had been tasked with getting a cake for the late iconic group proprietor George Steinbrenner’s memorial, they referred to as Vilma.
Vilma’s is amongst just a few notable reposterías, like Bizcocho Dominicano de Carmen in Queens and Bizcocho de Colores in Manhattan (maybe probably the most well-known one in New York), that get almost unanimous optimistic opinions on Google. That’s no simple feat: Primas and tías procuring cake for an occasion are exacting. If it falls aside on the best way to the venue, they’ll be the butt of dangerous bochinche (gossip) for months or years to come back. When requested what probably the most difficult a part of operating a repostería is, Vilma says with out hesitation, “Handing the cake to the shopper.” She’s discovered numerous methods through the years to make sure buyer satisfaction. “I all the time make the truffles a bit of larger than requested,” she explains. “Within the Dominican Republic, when it was humid within the winter, we’d maintain up solar reflectors over the cake to dry out the suspiro earlier than it melted.”
The Lopez household, which lately celebrated the bakery’s 14th anniversary, continues to run a decent ship. Vilma nonetheless is available in at 4:30 a.m., and Raymundo takes over at 10:30 a.m. By that point, the small storefront—lined with bride and groom collectible figurines and cartoon cake fashions—buzzes with clients, all placing of their orders and inspecting pickups. Some truffles handed over-the-counter are traditional-style bizcochos (tiered marriage ceremony truffles, and designs depicting clothes and Dominican flags) whereas others signify extra trendy developments (Paw Patrol or Fortnite truffles coated in slick fondant, or truffles adorned with the brand—or actual bottles—of Hennessy Cognac, Brugal Rum, or Presidente beer).
The bakery is simply as busy behind the scenes. Vilma’s rigorously skilled employees of 20 are scattered all through the halls and huddled over workstations, expertly bringing bizcochos to life. Rene Vargas mixes dough in a large stand mixer in a single room; Carlos Lopez (no relation) rigorously spreads suspiro over the truffles in one other; and Pamela Germosen, AirPods in her ears, gently rotates a cake turntable whereas tidying the lettering on a Canine Man-themed cake in yet one more room. Different reposteros make pineapple jam, guava paste, or dulce de leche from scratch to slather between cake layers.
This well-oiled operation now produces roughly 300 to 400 truffles per week, based on Vilma and Raymundo’s son, Ray Jr., who grew up within the enterprise. As Ray Jr. takes on an increasing number of of the day-to-day obligations, Vilma is tentatively enthusiastic about stepping again. These days, she spends extra time again dwelling in Tamboril and Punta Cana when she will be able to. As she reveals off footage of herself sporting a wide-brimmed hat and smoking a cigar with mates below palm bushes, she says, “On my final journey, anyone acknowledged me from Haverstraw and requested if I might make them a cake. I instructed them, ‘Not now. After I’m right here, I’m on trip.’”
