Brooklyn Sweet Spot
“I’m not an Entenmann’s kind of girl,” Kym Rodgers says of her passion for excellent dessert: fresh and baked from scratch, never mass-produced. As the owner of Brooklyn Sweet Spot in Fort Greene, she bakes a daily array of such treats, based on her grandmother’s southern recipes.
Born and bred in Brooklyn, Kym spent childhood summers with family in the South Carolina Lowcountry, where she indulged in decadent layer cakes, pies and puddings made with simple ingredients by her grandmother, Rosalie. On the inspiration behind starting her own bakery in 2010, she says, “I really wanted something that tasted like her.”
Kym, 49, didn’t initially consider cooking as a career, however — she pursued education instead, teaching elementary school for five years on Long Island. She picked up a catering job on the side and only began baking cake at the request of a client. Visiting Rosalie’s recipes was a revelation: “I started making cakes that were really, really good.”
When a friend encouraged her to open a bakery, Kym agreed to casually scope out a few places in Brooklyn. On her first day of looking, she found a space in Fort Greene. “I was like, ‘Why are you saying yes to this? You have all this debt,’” she recalls with a laugh. “But I was saying yes to things.”
Kym taught her last class on a Friday and opened Brooklyn Sweet Spot (then under the name Cake Joy) the following Monday. Eleven years later, she’s still here dishing out thick cake slices, perfect banana pudding, tender cookies and more.
“We are a community business. It’s my bakery, but it’s really *our* bakery.”
When Kym opened Brooklyn Sweet Spot in 2010, she only served cupcakes, including the flavor that started it all: The Rosalie, a moist vanilla bean cupcake with vanilla buttercream frosting named in honor of her grandmother. For the cake purist, it’s still on the menu. But today Kym’s got all the goods, with roughly 15 items baked fresh daily.
“I probably could not be open if I did not have banana pudding every day,” says Kym of one of her most popular treats, made with *just* the right ratio of bananas to Nilla Wafers to homemade custard. Other fan faves include the walnut-studded carrot cake and rich red velvet cake, both generously layered with cream cheese frosting, as well as the seasonal peach cobbler made with fresh summer peaches and the warmly spiced bread pudding drizzled with rum sauce.
The perfection of Brooklyn Sweet Spot’s desserts can’t be overstated — not a dry crumb in sight, from outrageously moist lemon blueberry cake to buttery, chewy oatmeal raisin cookies. In addition to traditional family recipes, Kym serves creations of her own, including alcohol-infused cupcakes in tipsy flavors like piña colada and cognac caramel.
At Brooklyn Sweet Spot, Kym not only reps for her grandmother, she reps for her hood. Inside the small yet sunny shop is a framed portrait of the family matriarch and a mural of Brooklyn legends including the Notorious B.I.G., Spike Lee, Jay-Z and Kym herself (“on a good hair day”). From outside the bakery, just two blocks from Fort Greene Park, she lures folks over with chalkboards etched with eye-catching messages, such as “Home of That Bomb @$$ Carrot Cake” and “Banana Puddin’ of Yo Whole Life!”
During the early days of the pandemic, Kym offered free bagged lunches for students and anyone in need from the store’s walk-up window. She also hosted virtual cooking classes for children. “We are a community business,” she says. “It’s my bakery, but it’s really *our* bakery, and I hope I get that across.” —By Morgan Carter
366 Mrytle Ave, 718-522-2577, thebrooklynsweetspot.com
