Introducing: Dessert After Dark

A special edition of the Nightlife Review from Dirt and Cake Zine.

Dessert After Dark is a mini newsletter series presented by Codeword, a communication design agency” building better comms, content, and communities for some of the best brands in the world. See their work and say hi at Codeword.Agency.

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Cake friends,

Welcome to 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐀𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤: A full week of original content in partnership with Dirt, a digital culture newsletter.

It’s a new incarnation of their series The Nightlife Review, only this time, it’s all about dessert. Each day, you’ll get an email from us with a dispatch from the world of late night snackers, from interviews with rave bakers to smutty fan fiction. In this series, bread pudding belongs in the club, a cake stand belongs on the bar, macarons should be served at sex parties, and the green M&M lives to seduce. 

There’s also inspiration for when you stumble home at 2AM and need something sweet: “Open the Tupperware of whipped cream and eat it spoonful by spoonful,” Chris Crowley writes. “It was made for the cake, but meant for you.”

Whatever your fantasy, we hope you get a taste of it in this very special issue. – Tanya Bush, Aliza Abarbanel and Daisy Alioto,

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Dynaco’s Dynamic Cake Baker 

Lessons in cake baking from the former face of Tampax/current face of a beloved Bed Stuy bar

by Vrinda Jagota

Cathy Lloyd Burns wants to make toast. She wants to stand in the back of Dynaco, the Brooklyn bar her husband, Adam Forgash, runs with his brother Ben, and fill up the room with the scent of crispy homemade sourdough. It would be cozy, she tells me, not to mention highly appealing to hungry, drunk patrons. But Forgash is worried about the crumbs and the fuss. Plus, there's plenty to do with the cake already.

I initially wanted to interview Burns, the baker behind the cakes at Dynaco, because I was curious about why it was the only food item on their menu (besides goldfish), and because I love the way it is displayed. Positioned on a cake stand beside Dynaco's quaint wood paneling and swathed in amber lighting, the cake has the steadfast, slightly antiquated glamor of an oil painting brought to life. 

But after speaking to Burns and Forgash for a few minutes, I was just as intrigued by the cake as I was by their oil and water dynamic: Burns’ boundless creativity and dynamism and Forgash’s focus and intentionality. At one point, when I asked if they ever modified the recipes, Burns declared  that she would, but Forgash shook his head affectionately, “It’s an institution!” She responded, “It’s a living thing!” There was an exuberant playfulness to their connection. “Adam!” Cathy exclaimed at one point as he was telling me about her many accolades, “You really love me!”

Burns is not only a baker; she’s also a doula, an herbalist, a writer, and an actress. You might recognize her as Malcolm's teacher in Malcolm in the Middle. Or from her memoir and children’s books. Or as the character of “Mother Nature” in a series of 2010s Tampax commercials. But one of her most impactful jobs has been making cakes for the bar. Inspired by late-night dessert clubs in Toronto, or maybe by the specific Los Angeles bakery Sweet Lady Jane’s—Adam and Cathy’s accounts vary—the duo always knew they wanted cake to be a central feature at Dynaco from the very beginning. Initially, in 2013, they served slices with a glass of full fat milk. Now, the milk is off the menu, it would usually go bad before the entire carton was finished, but the cake persists. On a late afternoon in August, I sat down with Forgash and Burns over dirty martinis and goldfish to chat about Dynaco’s origins, the trauma of the cake-quinox, and Forgash’s secret foray into baking the cakes himself. 

How did you start Dynaco?

Adam: My brother and I started working on it in 2011. He’s a film editor with anxiety. I was working in advertising and hated it. 

Cathy: Adam wrote copy at Ralph Lauren, which he found extremely oppressive because he could only use words like “heritage” and “preppy.” 

Adam: Two different friends of mine and my brother’s had started successful bars—Rope, Hotbird, Brooklyn Social and Henry Public—and they encouraged us to make the jump. 

We were at a gig seeing a band called Phenomenal Handclap Band. All the people were young but dressed in things like buckskin and bell bottoms. It felt like we were in the 1970s. I always loved that time and wanted to build a place for those people. 

This building used to be full of plumbing supplies. Before that it was a bodega, and legend has it that Biggie Smalls used it as a stash house. There's footage on YouTube of him freestyling in the front.

You knew immediately that you wanted cake to be part of Dynaco. Why was it so important to you to serve it?

Cathy: I often go out to dinner or to a bar and people want to go to another bar afterwards. I'm five feet tall. I just can't drink that much, but I still want to hang out. I thought, ‘I would totally go to more bars if I could just sit with everybody and eat cake.’ 

Do the cake flavors change throughout the year?

Cathy: They do. There are three. 

Adam: Spring to summer is carrot cake. Currently, we’re on the cusp of the cake-quinox. 

Cathy: Can you feel it in the air? I love that you said that, Adam.

Adam: In the fall it’s chocolate cake. Then in the winter we go to Guinness stout cake. 

Cathy: People are really attached to their favorite cake. The cake-quinox is traumatizing for some. But sometimes when we change flavors, people get really into the new one. 

Adam: People in the neighborhood know. They’re always asking me when it’s switching over. One guy comes in specifically during carrot cake season. People have also sent us emails asking if they can reserve whole cakes for parties here. And, a customer of ours got married recently and we baked their cake [It was the carrot cake].

Jared [Smith, the bartender], from your perspective, what stands out about the cake?

Jared: The unique thing about the cake is how unexpected it is. Some people order it thinking it’s a cocktail. Others will ask if we have any food and I’ll say carrot cake and they’ll be like ‘What?!’ and before you know it they’ll be coming every week for it. Sometimes they’ll even come in just for the cake and take it to go in their own Tupperware. What sticks out in my mind is how much it throws people off.

Cathy: So it’s a destabilizer. Would you say it’s a conversation starter, Jared?

Jared: Well it’s such a date bar. What's better than sharing a dessert on a date? I don’t think you were doing that intentionally but -

Cathy: Possibly. I’m really into romance. 

How did you learn to bake?

Cathy: I was a dessert baker for a while for a restaurant on 43rd street when I was young. On my first day of work, they gave me a set of keys and one of them was to a closet filled with chocolate. I’m not fancy - things I make look very homemade. But I don't know, I’ve just never been scared of it.

Adam: You taught baking too! Before the pandemic, Cathy taught bread classes at our house. People would come for 7 hours and make bread.

Cathy: This friend of ours, a Waldorf parent, came over once and brought this hard brown thing wrapped in fabric. He presented and was like, ‘I'm making sourdough now.’ And it was delicious because it was homemade, but it was quite firm. I said, ‘How do you do sourdough? Can I have some of your starter?’ Because I didn't know anything about it. He wouldn't share it. He said ‘It's very hard, and you should really practice with other bread first.’

So then I was determined to learn. It took me two years of trying constantly ‘cause I’m an idiot. I had a notebook and I wrote down everything that I did every single time, but I didn't analyze any of the results.

I did finally learn and then I thought people might want to come over, hang out, and eat a ton of bread and really feel it, touch it, learn it from the top to the bottom. And then I was their lifelong bread doula. 

Is baking the cakes rewarding?

Cathy: I have been on TV, I have been in movies and I have published some writing and baking the cakes is one of the things I get recognized for the most. 

Adam: Yeah, Cathy was in sitcoms in the ‘90s. 

Jared: Yeah, you buried the lede!

Cathy: That’s not the lede, Jared! People say ‘Oh my God, you make the cake at Dynaco?’ And I feel like that moves them, perhaps more than some of my other work. I never get tired of seeing someone enjoy what I’ve made.

Jared: How do you tell people about your career?

Adam: Here, I’ll pretend to be the customer: “Who makes the cake?”

Jared: Cathy. 

Adam: Cathy who?

Jared: She was the teacher on Malcolm in the Middle. She was the face of Tampax. And she bakes bread.

Vrinda: She’s a bread doula.

Adam: She’s also an actual doula.

Vrinda: What???

Adam: And she’s an herbalist. She’s kind of the most fascinating woman. 

Cathy: Adam! You’re actually - you’re really in love with me.

Adam: I told you!

Vrinda: You’re a doula?!

Cathy: Yes, a postpartum doula. Sometimes I bring people who have had a baby a loaf of bread. It’s nourishing. The stout cake does have stout in it which builds milk supply so sometimes I bring that too. I’m also an herbalist and I make oxymels [a drink with medicinal qualities made from vinegar, honey, and other herbs] for Dynaco. We have one that's made of blue lotus and butterfly blue pea. Blue lotus was actually the drug of choice of Cleopatra. And butterfly blue pea is so gentle and relaxing. It's like diving into a pool of the most beautiful water. And I personally love to swim. 

Are there any weird or funny stories about the cake? 

Cathy: I dropped one on the way out of the car to the bar once. I asked Adam if we could still serve it. He said no. And then I was going to bring it home—I did actually bring it home anyway. 

Adam: You tried to serve it to the kids next door! 

Cathy: They love the cake!

Adam: It probably had rat shit in it!

Cathy: I cut off all the parts that touched anything. I ate it. I'm fine.

Cathy: And [to Adam ]I’m going to tell her..I broke my wrist. And [whispers] Adam had to make the cakes. 

Vrinda: What was that like?

Cathy: At first, I had to stand next to him. He was like, ‘I'm not going to do it right.’

Adam: I’m very precise and Cathy’s more of an artist, she’s like, ‘Oh about this much’ [gestures to pouring in unmeasured amounts] and I don’t want to fuck it up. It created a lot of cake anxiety.

Cathy: But then he got really good at it. When I took over again he was like… ‘Is that how you’re supposed to do it? [laughs]

Vrinda: So do you still make the cakes sometimes?

Cathy: I’m able to make the cakes again, but he still does sometimes…almost as if he enjoys it. And takes pride in it.

Vrinda Jagota is a freelance writer and union organizer based in Brooklyn. She loves those grocery store cookies that look like a children’s illustration brought to life…huge sprinkles, Barbie pink frosting, cakey texture, kind of perfect ???