I Want The Sweet Stuff

The North Fork Tale Of Cookies, Candy And You Know, The Good Stuff

By Phyllis Lombardi

Enough with the broccoli, the cabbage, the brussels sprouts and that ugly stuff they call kale. What our North Fork kids want is cookies. Big cookies, sugary cookies, crumbly cookies!

And that’s just what our kids got a couple of Tuesdays ago at Junda’s Pastry, the year-old “crust and crumbs” bakery on Main Road in Jamesport.

It’s on a bit of a hill, this bakery is, well worth the climb. The kids visiting the bakery this day were the offspring of moms in the Southold Mothers Club. Every week or so, the mothers and their young children do something special. In this case, it was a tour of Junda’s, some information about working in a bakery, and lots of cookie decoration and sampling on the part of the kids. OK, so the mothers and I did a little tasting, too. Wouldn’t you?

But first, let me tell you about Christopher and Helen Junda, owners, and the folks who get up at 3 a.m. every day so we can have our pies, apple strudel (Christopher’s favorite), cookies and scones.

Christopher is a graduate of Newbury Culinary College in Brookline, Massachusetts. Before opening the Jamesport bakery, he was a pastry chef in Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel and closer to home, the Garden City Hotel. Lest you think his work place was always so elegant, Christopher will rush to tell you he once had a “pie stand” on Peconic Bay Boulevard in Jamesport. Many of his customers at the new bakery first tasted his pies back in those days.

Well, on this sweet day the Jundas hosted 22 preschool youngsters, a dozen or so mothers, one daddy and one great-grandmother. The kids came into the bakery noisy and at full speed, but Christopher got their attention immediately by promising cookies.

And the tour began. The bathtub-size mixing bowls, the walk-in refrigerator, the huge ovens that bake more than 100 pies at a time. All things the children had never experienced.

Who were some of those kids? Emmet and Bridget Ryan, brother and sister from Mattituck were there with mom Kathy, who is Events Coordinator of the Southold Mothers Club. Little Emmet, during the course of the morning, was outfitted with latex gloves and given the joyful job of squeezing raspberry jelly onto the Linzer tarts. Oh, the messy ecstasy of it all! Emmet had a helper, too. The very capable, very young Gabrielle Finora of Mattituck.

Little brothers Lance and Luca Benedetti of Wading River brought along, in addition to their mother, a special guest. Their great-grandma, Rulie Ronzetti, also of Wading River. Rulie is a bread maker and I can only imagine how she’d enjoy working in Junda’s kitchen. Now she watched as Christopher Junda encourage the children to sprinkle powdered sugar on top of those Linzer tarts. Think about that. Great white clouds of sugar rising, then falling. Some of it even meeting up with the cookies.

From the cookies to the cupcakes. Big puffy things with lots of creamy white icing. Ready for, just begging for, the vari-colored sprinkles Christopher had set out in several bowls. Matthew and Cassidy Czujko of Mattituck were up to this as was Ryan Fulda of Southold. You know what happens when little kids eat those big, puffy things with lots of creamy white icing? All 22 of ’em needed baths. And check out their hair for sprinkles.

Oh, yes, that one dad I mentioned earlier. Adam Volosik, a 1987 graduate of Southold High School, kept an eye on his sons Jackson and Jacob. But I had the feeling dad might have enjoyed being kid number 23 – if only for an hour. The jelly, the sugar, the sprinkles.

Before we left Junda’s, Christopher told us that he plans on fully restoring the more than 300-year-old home that is the bakery. In the meantime he and Helen are two busy people. There were the 800 pies they baked at Thanksgiving. The Christmas and New Year’s orders are coming in now.

Even so, Christopher and Helen continue to spend time with children – they do their “bakery adventure” with Brownie troops and Head Start youngsters. It’s pretty easy to understand why. Happiness is a kid with a couple of cookies. And one of those cookies we’ll leave out for Santa.