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 individuals can get a style of Tamboril, the small Dominican cigar-making city the place a lot of Haverstraw’s residents come from.
Immediately, two-thirds of Haverstraw’s residents are from Latin America. The city has lengthy attracted migrants looking 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 trade within the Nineteen Fifties. Dominicans, particularly these from Tamboril, arrived in additional vital numbers starting within the Nineteen Eighties and got here to type 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 newest newcomer on Major Avenue was Vilma Lopez, people had been salivating. The sharp younger lady with distinctive caramel hair and a pink 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’ houses. Everybody had the identical query: “Are you able to make your grandmother’s bizcocho?”
It’s not that bizcocho Dominicano was arduous to return by in Haverstraw on the time—dozens of reposterías and lots of extra residence 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, wedding ceremony, or quinceañera had the ability to make their residence on the Hudson really feel extra just like the one they left behind on the Río Licey. The cake’s gentle, 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.
Fortuitously 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 a whole lot of multicolored sugar flowers. “It wasn’t the simplest job,” she recollects. “The pastry baggage we had had been a lot tougher to squeeze than those we’ve now.” When Lopez was 14, her grandmother despatched her to apprentice with a cake decorator within the huge metropolis of Santiago, after which she turned a fair better asset to Reynoso’s booming bizcocho enterprise. Lopez says, “In fact, I wished to be out with my mates, however I didn’t like seeing her work so arduous, so I helped.” Typically, Lopez would break free to play volleyball on the native courts, the place she ultimately met her future husband, Raymundo Lopez.
Vilma and Raymundo married on Christmas Day in 1982. He moved to Washington Heights in New York Metropolis a couple of 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 finest: she began making truffles once more in a repostera’s tiny condo on 163rd Avenue (properly, first she washed dishes for the girl, then she made truffles) whereas Raymundo labored numerous manufacturing unit jobs. Two years later, mates satisfied the household to maneuver to Haverstraw, and Vilma started her personal bizcocho residence bakery.
The Lopezes’ story could sound acquainted to plenty of Dominican immigrants. Like many others, they got here to New York Metropolis through 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 help their households with jobs within the precarious manufacturing and repair industries, and ladies did what they may to choose up the slack. Even ladies with skilled coaching confronted language, racial, and different socioeconomic limitations, which regularly compelled them to return to historically devalued home labor.
Within the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s, a couple of 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 out to be a prolific cookbook creator 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 america, the place it turned one of the crucial 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 through the day and, like Vilma, supplemented her household’s revenue by making bizcochos late into the evening. She stated, “I discovered to make truffles right here, watching a lady who taught me. I prepare dinner as a result of it jogs my memory of my land.” Marte’s work exhibits how for Dominican ladies like Fifa and Vilma, recipes turned a method 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 not needed to work manufacturing unit jobs, and the bakery rapidly turned one of the crucial standard 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 crew proprietor George Steinbrenner’s memorial, they referred to as Vilma.
Vilma’s is amongst a couple of 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 evaluations on Google. That’s no simple feat: Primas and tías procuring cake for an occasion are exacting. If it falls aside on the way in which to the venue, they’ll be the butt of unhealthy bochinche (gossip) for months or years to return. When requested what probably the most difficult a part of working a repostería is, Vilma says with out hesitation, “Handing the cake to the client.” She’s discovered plenty of methods through the years to make sure buyer satisfaction. “I all the time make the truffles a bit greater 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 just 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 prospects, all placing of their orders and inspecting pickups. Some truffles handed over-the-counter are traditional-style bizcochos (tiered wedding ceremony truffles, and designs depicting clothes and Dominican flags) whereas others signify extra fashionable developments (Paw Patrol or Fortnite truffles coated in slick fondant, or truffles embellished 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 fastidiously skilled employees of 20 are scattered all through the halls and huddled over workstations, expertly bringing bizcochos to life. Rene Vargas mixes dough in an enormous stand mixer in a single room; Carlos Lopez (no relation) fastidiously 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 increasingly of the day-to-day tasks, Vilma is tentatively fascinated by stepping again. These days, she spends extra time again residence in Tamboril and Punta Cana when she will. As she exhibits off photos of herself sporting a wide-brimmed hat and smoking a cigar with mates below palm bushes, she says, “On my final journey, someone acknowledged me from Haverstraw and requested if I may make them a cake. I instructed them, ‘Not now. Once I’m right here, I’m on trip.’”
