Find Bouncy Desserts, Butter Cookies, and Pure Joy at this Brooklyn Bakery

For Doris Hồ-Kane, baking means more than just creating beautiful treats. “It’s always been so important for us to preserve our culture,” says the owner and founder of the Brooklyn-based Vietnamese-American bakery Bạn Bè. “The easiest way to do it is through food.”

On any given day, the offerings at Bạn Bè could include multi-colored pandan waffles, mooncakes, bánh mì, tins of her signature bơ butter cookies, or thạch rau câu, fruit jellies that Hồ-Kane makes just like her grandmother did. Sometimes she layers jelly made from agar, a gelatinous substance derived from seaweed, to make rau câu dừa lá dứa, chewy confections with alternating tiers of pandan and coconut milk molded into a flower shape. If you’re lucky, she’ll have concocted her cà phê thạch rau câu flan, which features layers of flan and Vietnamese coffee–infused agar jelly molded perfectly into a Bundt shape.

Hồ-Kane’s desserts are inspired by the culinary traditions of her family, who moved to the United States from Vietnam as refugees. “They came over with nothing. The things that my family held with them were from memory, and those memories were all the desserts my grandmother loved to eat,” she explains. The family settled in Dallas, in 1980, where familiar ingredients were in short supply. “We didn’t have an Asian grocery store at the time, but she would make do with what she had.”

Over the years, as the Vietnamese community in America became more established, specialty grocers began importing ingredients like rice paper, palm sugar, fish sauce, and fermented fish paste, which the family had been longing for. Once agar made its way onto the shelves in Dallas, Hồ-Kane’s mother was finally able to prepare one of her favorite dishes: thạch rau câu, or fruit jellies. Agar gives the colorful jellies a distinct bouncy texture.

Hồ-Kane eventually moved to New York City, where she attended art school and worked as an archivist and fashion designer. Like her mother and grandmother before her, she found comfort in making the desserts from her childhood in her new home. Drawing from her experience, Hồ-Kane began to develop distinct dessert recipes of her own, blending Vietnamese sweets with her favorite Western-style treats. “As a Vietnamese-American, I was kind of living on that hyphen,” she says. “I was drawing from my experience growing up as a child of refugees and then also as an American who likes mac and cheese.”

One of her first creations was a line of butter cookies as an ode to the Royal Dansk Danish Butter Cookies she loved as a kid. Her versions are infused with some of her favorite Vietnamese flavors, such as ube, sesame, and tamarind. The cookies became so popular among her friends and family that, in 2020, she knew it was time to share her creations with a wider audience. “I’d been in New York City for 21 years, and I had not seen any place that specialized in just Vietnamese desserts,” Hồ-Kane says. “So I started to think about opening up a space of my own.” In February 2021, she launched Bạn Bè, which means “friend” in Vietnamese.

Today, the bakery offers a menu that changes daily, with sweet and sometimes savory options inspired by Hồ-Kane’s upbringing. Her flair for aesthetics is evident in the vibrant colors she showcases in her desserts, but at the heart of it all is Hồ-Kane’s journey exploring her dual identity. Cooking the same dishes that her family and ancestors prepared is a healing experience for her, she says, and her work reflects that. “I think everything I do is a personal extension of myself, and it’s really important for me to shine a light on and amplify our stories and our voices.”

Hồ-Kane’s work is on the leading edge of a larger nationwide movement in Vietnamese desserts, where a rising generation of chefs are cooking and sharing food for the pure joy of it, simultaneously preserving deep-rooted cultural recipes and adding distinct styles of their own. “A lot of people have come to the bakery and gotten emotional,” Hồ-Kane says. “These things are all connected to memory, nostalgia, and representation. Refugees have always been so creative with ways to survive. But I think that these Vietnamese-American desserts are a representation of creativity and maybe even the next level of thriving and not solely surviving.” 

For hours and more information, visit the bakery on Instagram @ban__be.

More places to find new-wave Vietnamese-American desserts

Bánh by Lauren

At her New York City–based pop-up, Lauren Tran sells a variety of French and Vietnamese desserts. Among them are her wildly popular bánh bò (honeycomb cakes), bright chiffon cakes scented with pandan and coconut, and an assortment of macarons.

Càphê Roasters

Inspired by a Vietnamese expression that translates to “let’s drink coffee,” Càphê is the first roastery of its kind in Philadelphia. Find Vietnamese-influenced parfaits, like one with condensed milk soft serve and coffee jelly made from house-brewed Vietnamese espresso.

Berlu

James Beard Award–nominated chef Vincent Nguyen is the mind behind this bakery in Portland, Oregon, that serves hits like pandan waffles, durian coffee, and persimmon custard. The bakery is currently on hiatus; find it on Instagram @berlubakery for pop-up information.