Robicelli's

It’s Mardi Gras, it’s President’s Day weekend- it’s just madness over here! Yesterday, we drove from Brooklyn out to Patchogue to visit our only Long Island outpost, Queen City Cupcakes (GORGEOUS!!! A must visit if you’re out east).  After Patchogue, we drove out to East Hampton to see my aunt, then to Maidstone, then back to East Hampton, then to Bridgehampton, then Southampton, the Quogue to give our class at the Quogue Library (also gorgeous! Seriously- Bay Ridge looks like crap after this weekend!), then back to Brooklyn to get the kids, then to Staten Island, and now finally to Monroe Township in Central New Jersey.

I. Am. Exhausted. So I get to blame all typos, poor segways, and idiotic sentence structure on that today. It’s nice to finally have a real excuse for it, in contrast to all the other days the blog is comprised mostly of that stuff anyway.  Those times it solely because I’m lazy and/or writing the blog while simultaneously screaming at “Days of Our Lives” on SoapNet.

Here’s some random stuff I have to talk about that has really nothing to do with each other. I really tried hard to find a thread to tie it all together, but the magic is just not happening today. I must admit, I’m half tempted to make some crack like “the magic’s not happening - except in my pants!”, which can only mean I have spent entirely way too much time hanging out with my husband this weekend.

1. A big THANK YOU to all the people who sold out our master class in Quogue. We are both so floored that you all took the time out of your busy schedules to come and spend an afternoon listening to us ramble on and on and on and on……

Also a big thank you to Ann Marie Borghese of Borghese Vineyards who provided us with the merlot we will now be using in our Chocolate Merlot brownies. You can catch her at the Union Square & Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket on select days- we heavily suggest the Merlot, which in our eyes is a great basic table red.  And as for those merlot brownies- expect to be able to find them regularly at our DeKalb shop starting on 4/6, and potentially out east soon…..

2. …..speaking of out east - the last time we were at my aunt’s house out east was seven whole years ago. Now most of you, rightfully, are probably wondering what the hell is wrong with us, since anyone who has an open invitation to stay out in the Hamptons any time they’d like should probably go three times a week. And I will tell you what was wrong with us: we had kids. Then the kids weren’t enough so we threw a small business on top of that! 

Within five minutes of being back on Route 27, I instantly remembered all the days I had spent as a child catching blue crabs and digging for clams like they were yesterday. The weekends spent fishing off the back of my aunt’s kayak, bringing a bag of porgys back to my aunt’s one room cottage and spending the night cooking and eating in our bathing suits.  It made me realize that one quick overnight stopover during a business trip after a seven year absence was not remotely enough.

Now the kids are old enough to take out east, but we still have that little problem of us being entrepreneurs, meaning that it is next to impossible for Matt and I to turn “off” and justify being off from work for more than two days. So if anyone out there can come up with any way to rationalize an extended stay in the Hamptons, let us know. You know a shop we can run a week-long pop-up in? Have a wedding you want us to cater? Want us to give private baking classes?  Give a lecture for your organization? Bake pies for charity? Want Matt to clean your pool?  

We just need leads, because that place is totally unrecognizable from when I was a kid. Seriously, my old toy store is a Juicy Couture now, and my favorite candy shop is now home to the Corcoran Group. I DO, however, still know the best spot to go to catch frogs, so don’t think this would be a one-sided information exchange!

3: LOGO SEARCH 2012: Current results- #1 and #3 are TIED, each with 40% of the vote, and #2 has 20%. So I’m going to give this a few more days.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE FIRST DRAFT OF OUR NEW LOGO. Note that I put “First Draft” in bold. These are not close to final- we’re picking a design to use as a starting point, hoping to get a final in a few weeks. I had a lot of people say they hated #3, but voted for it because it said “Brooklyn”. We can put Brooklyn on any of the logos- we probably will. We’re also changing the colors. Those will all be future polls- we promise. Right now, we’re going straight for gut reaction.

What is your gut telling us to do? Because mine is telling me to take a 5 minute writing break in order to eat some ice cream sandwiches. 

Yes, sandwiches. I meant that to be plural.

4: MAAAARRRRDDDDDIIIIIII GRRRRAAAAASSSSSS!!!!

This is a very special cupcake day, because we’ve got a bunch of N’Awlins inspired flavors on the menu, including two brand spanking new ones: Pecan Praline & King Cake!

When researching King cakes, we found about 1,000 recipes, all of them radically different. Then we learned that we’ve been making the original King cake for years, except in our house, we called it by the name we learned from our French training: Pithivier. Not only delicious, but really really really fun to say out loud. Almost as fun as saying “Me montrer votre belle poitrine” (WOOOO MARDI GRAS!).

Pithivier is a very simple cake, made with frangipange (aka almond cream) sandwiched between two disks of puff pastry, then baked until puffed and golden.  If you buy the puff pastry (we recommend Dufour all-butter puff), it’s an amazingly easy dessert to try and make on your own. Here’s a link to Jacques Torres’ recipe, which is the first one I ever made when I was 16 years old, and the basis of the recipe I use til this day.

Our “King Cupcake” is an almond cake filled with almond pastry cream, topped with an almond custard buttercream, then rolled in feuillitine (aka crispy puff pastry). And since it’s a special occasion, we’ve airbrushed the cupcakes the traditional colors of purple (for justice), green (for faith), and gold (for power).

I know, I know - we don’t use food coloring! But all the cajuns we talked to stressed how important the colors were, and coincidentally we were just introduced to 100% natural line of non-chemical food coloring! It’s a Mardi Gras miracle!

So we’ve got the King Cake, Pecan Praline & Bananas Foster cupcakes to celebrate, but there’s always a 4th cupcake. What else could we be celebrating?

5: HAPPY BIRTHDAY RUE McCLANAHAN!!!!

Happy 78th birthday in heaven, beautiful. We still love you down here.

Now let’s go make Fat Tuesday live up to it’s name!

Clockwise from front: King Cake, Pecan Praline, Rue McClanahan, Bananas Foster

NEW! King Cake: Almond cake, almond custard filling, almond custard buttercream, feuillitine

NEW! Pecan Praline: Pecan cake, vanilla buttercream, homemade pecan pralines

Bananas Foster: Banana cake, rum-salted caramel buttercream and drizzle

Rue McClanahan: Peach cake, cheesecake buttercream, brown sugar & peach compote

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Cupcakes Available at:

Cafe at Sam’s Bakery:  94th off 3rd, Bay Ridge

Aloha Grinds: 77th and 3rd, Bay Ridge

Crespella: 7th Ave off 9th Street, Park Slope

Tazza Cafes: Clark off Henry AND Henry off Atlantic, Brooklyn Heights

Cake Shop: Ludlow btwn Stanton & Rivington, LES

Joe Columbia University: West 120th btwn Broadway & Amsterdam, Morningside Heights

By Brooklyn: 261 Smith Street

Queen City Cupcakes: West Main Street, Patchogue, Long Island

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Whoopie Pies Available At:

Red Hook Lobster Pound: 284 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook

Tazza Cafes: Clark off Henry AND Henry off Atlantic, Brooklyn Heights

Queen City Cupcakes: West Main Street, Patchogue, Long Island

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Brownies Available At:

Queen City Cupcakes: West Main Street, Patchogue, Long Island

Oaxaca Tacos: 250 4th Avenue- Park Slope Brooklyn; 251 Smith Street Cobble Hill Brooklyn; 16 Extra Place, LES Manhattan

While our shop at DeKalb has been closed this winter, we’ve been doing LOTS of exciting back end stuff here at Robicelli’s. Like taxes! Setting up new accounting software to handle payroll! And (finally) finishing the book proposal! Would you believe that’s just the tip of the iceberg? Seriously! 

One of the many projects I’ve been working on is finally coming up with a “graphic identity” for us, which we haven’t really had for the past few years because we were broke and couldn’t afford it.  Also, throughout my entire career I’ve seen (and worked for) companies who spend all their efforts branding - creating a slick, glossy corporate package - and then once you look past the logo you find that there’s actually absolutely zero quality and nothing of substance.  

Though I can name a thousand graphic designers who will argue otherwise, not having a budget for design ended up being invaluable to us for lots of reasons. For one, it made people notice us on the strength of our product, and not because lots of stuff on our website moved around to trance music. Instead of having a fancy website, we ended up making our internet home here on Tumblr, which was without question the smartest move we could have made as a growing small business (as for all the reasons why- well, that’s another post entirely).  Also, trying to make a logo ourselves yielded this:

We made some other ones, too, but I’m trying hard to keep this blog PG-13. 

2012 finds us in a new place. We’ve proved that we have substance. We have plans of expansion, and big projects on the way. We’ve got our first whole season at DeKalb starting on April 6th.  And after years of hard work, we have a teeny weeny little budget. So one of my projects for this winter was to finally find a designer that answered emails and phone calls, and start working on a comprehensive visual branding profile for Robicelli’s.  This blog is going to get itself sexified!!! 

After countless interviews with designers who just didn’t get what we were looking for, hours of research, asking around for references, tons of preliminary sketches that we hated, we finally found our designer by screwing around on Facebook. I always think of my old friend Isaac Lubow as the 15 year old kid with a blue mohawk that I went to Stuyvesant High School with. I keep forgetting that since we graduate, he also graduated from Pratt, also became a parent, did some modeling, and opened a graphic design firm in Bali. He also takes the time out of his busy schedule to be one of the funniest people on Twitter, because he’s truly a gift to humanity.

Within 12 hours of talking, three preliminary sketches were in my inbox. Usually when I get sketches, I hate most, if not all of them. This time? HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE WITH THEM ALL. Which sucks, because I can’t choose. So I put all three of them up on Facebook and on my personal page, thinking there would be an obvious favorite and I’d just run with that. Except that when I broke down all the comments, they were all voted for equally, all defended by excellent arguments. And I cannot for the life of me decide which one to use as a starting point:

“Easy to read”. “Hands down my favorite”, “Like both the design/font”, “Has the most potential as a first draft”, “Clean & simple”, “Will translate well to packaging”

BUT ”Reminds me of a diner sign and crappy diner cake” “Too Broadway”

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“Personal, classy and already feels important”, “Reminds me of classic bakeries”, “Love the retro feel”, “Would look good on print materials”, “Reads more gourmet and upmarket”, “Fancier”

BUT ”I think the ‘o’ sort of looks like an ‘a’, so I’m reading it as Rabicelli’s” “Cursive writing is pretentious now, and people under the age of 18 can’t read cursive anymore”

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“Looks the most iconic and visually arresting”, “Progressive, new, and smacks your mother in the ass then licks your dads nose”, “Very ownable- retro, yet there’s something modern about it” “Like that it says ‘Brooklyn’”, “Will hold up in different sizes”, “The guys from Clutch would pick this logo, and seriously Allison, when do you not listen to the dudes from Clutch” 

BUT ”Reminds me of a Soviet Propaganda poster”, “Reminds me of gum” “Cold & sterile”

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And these aren’t even the final drawings! This is the first draft! How has a first draft become do divisive?!?!

This little social media experiment has accomplished the following:

1. Exposed me to the fact that every single person that I know is a designer, or is married to a designer, or has a best friend who’s a designer, or lives next door to a designer, or took design in school once.

2. Given me the worst headache I have had since my I finally finished the book proposal (so, since last Friday)

3. Made me realize that once I pick the first draft, I’m going to have to pick a second draft, then a third, and then we can start talking about color schemes. And this is just for the logo. After that, we redesign the Tumblr. And then packaging. And then the t-shirt and the officially licensed Robicelli’s tracksuits and G-strings. Meaning there’s an excellent chance that by the end of this year, I will be 100% catatonic, but as a small consolation, I will at least be wearing a dope-ass tracksuit. And maybe a G-string, depending on how cold it is.

Isaac told me to just go with my gut and pick one, but even my gut isn’t sure. So we’re doing the only logical thing:

We are making the entire process of branding our company interactive.

I mean really, who knows our company better than you guys- the ones who read our blog, buy our cupcakes, and have been supporting us as we’ve grown? And who are the people who are going to see this logo on shelves, on storefronts, on skimpy underwear? YOU are. So we want you to guide us along, tell us what you want to see, and have your opinions be a part of this company. CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE FIRST DRAFT. We’ll tally the votes next week, then keep you updated as we move forward. And when we need to make another decision, we’ll ask you guys first. 

Because we loves and respects you guys long time. Super duper for reals. Now celebrate our love by eating some cupcakes!

Clockwise from front: Chocolate PB Pretzel, Duckwalk, Chocolate Merlot, Creamsicle

Chocolate PB Pretzel: Chocolate cake, peanut butter buttercream, crushed peanuts and pretzels

Duckwalk: Vanilla cake, blueberry port mascarpone buttercream, port simmered blueberries

Chocolate Merlot: Chocolate merlot cake & buttercream, chocolate shavings, black pepper

Creamsicle: Orange cake, vanilla buttercream, candied orange peel

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Cupcakes Available at:

Cafe at Sam’s Bakery: 94th Street off 3rd Avenue, Bay Ridge

Aloha Grinds: 77th & 3rd Ave, Bay Ridge

Bagel Schmagel: 76th & 3rd Ave, Bay Ridge

Blue Apron Foods: Union Street off 7th Ave, Park Slope

Tazza: Clark St off Henry AND Henry St off Atlantic, Brooklyn Heights

Eastern District: Manhattan Ave off Eagle, Greenpoint

Brooklyn Standard: Nassau Street off Jewel, Greenpoint

Cake Shop: Ludlow btwn Stanton & Rivington, LES

Joe Columbia University: West 120th Street btwn Broadway & Amsterdam, Morningside Heights

Bar 5F at Bergdorf Goodman: 5th Avenue & 58th Street, 5th Floor, Manhattan

Queen City Cupcakes: Patchogue, Long Island

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Whoopie Pies Available At:

Red Hook Lobster Pound: 284 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook

Tazza: Clark St off Henry AND Henry St off Atlantic, Brooklyn Heights

Queen City Cupcakes: West Main Street, Patchogue, Long Island

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Brownies Available At:

Queen City Cupcakes: West Main Street, Patchogue, Long Island

Oaxaca Tacos: 250 4th Avenue- Park Slope Brooklyn; 251 Smith Street Cobble Hill Brooklyn; 16 Extra Place, LES Manhattan