Dorothy Stone founded her company in response to a five-alarm cake emergency in these parts: There’s hardly any place to buy a proper cake anymore, what with the closing of Sag Harbor Bakery and Breadzilla of Wainscott, and with once-upon-a-time neighborhood bakeries like Plain and Fancy nothing more than a sadly distant memory. “There aren’t many bakeries with quality baked goods around here — baked goods made with real butter, sugar, and flour,” says Stone, who lives with her husband in Sag Harbor and opened up her virtual shop just over a year ago.
Dorothy’s Baking Co. doesn’t yet maintain a shopfront, perhaps unsurprisingly, given the cost of real estate and rents these days, but instead does business via website. All sorts of pies, tarts, and cakes in different sizes and with a choice of tempting flavors (confetti, marble, devil’s food, et cetera), fillings (lemon curd, whipped cream, peanut-butter mousse, mocha custard, and so on), and frostings (from plain vanilla to coconut) can be custom-ordered smoothly online. Stone delivers them herself to addresses between Southampton and East Hampton; depending on logistics, deliveries can sometimes also be made to Montauk, Amagansett, and Hampton Bays for a fee. Cromer’s Market in Noyac carries a selection of cakes, too. She also does sticky buns, coffee rings, scones, and cupcakes, among other treats.
There is no fondant here, thank you very much. Her cakes are gorgeous, make no mistake, but they’re about the taste, not the Instagram opportunity. Buttercream is the order of the day.
Stone, who hails from New Britain, Conn., has impressive confectionery credentials. She began baking as a little girl and joined a culinary competition team in high school. She earned a degree in baking and pastry arts from Johnson & Wales University in Providence, and had an interesting internship in the pastry kitchen of Facebook’s corporate headquarters during her senior year (“We served breakfast and lunch for 2,000 to 3,000 Facebook employees per day!”). After moving to the East End in 2014, she worked as a pastry cook at Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton, as head baker at Harbor Market and Kitchen in Sag Harbor, and a baker at the late, lamented Breadzilla. She opened Dorothy’s Baking just over a year ago, making use of a commercial kitchen in Sag Harbor.
The goods change with the seasons — this winter, for instance, including such temptations as apple crumb pie and vanilla bean cheesecake. She also does a popular holiday cookie box, with a variety that would surely please Santa, when served with a glass of milk, including brown-butter chocolate chips, chewy ginger molasses cookies, and her mom’s almond paste cookies. Her favorite cake, this time of year, is pumpkin spice latte cake. “It consists of layers of pumpkin spice cake and espresso buttercream, salted caramel glaze, and chocolate-covered espresso beans,” Stone says. Sold!