Fern and Aurora, a small-batch dessert shop that specializes in Filipino-inspired sweets, is offering delicious creations like freshly-made ube donuts and hand-painted bonbons in Douglaston.
The hidden gem is located at 39-02 Little Neck Pkwy. in a space that was formerly a long-standing deli called Little Neck Cafe. Now, guests can step into the cozy space and immerse themselves in the sights, aromas and flavors of freshly made pastries and sweets.
“It’s not your traditional Filipino,” said Cherry Adame, the bakery’s owner. “There’s a Filipino flair to it; it’s everything that I learned throughout the years, and I put my culture in it.”
Adame was born in the Philippines and lived there until she was about 7, when she and her family moved to the U.S. As an adult, she worked in fine dining for 20 years, including places like Florida and Minnesota, in various dining and hospitality spaces before deciding to become a pastry chef. When she moved back to New York, she decided it was time to open her bakery. Initially, her father bought the building where the bakery is, but Adame shared her vision with him and took over the space, which officially opened in February 2023, naming the bakery after her dogs, Fern and Aurora.
“They’re both our rescue dogs, and it’s funny because there’s a pond near the bakery called Aurora pond, and it was just a coincidence,” said Adame.
The bakery has a mix of year-round selections and seasonal treats to keep the menu fresh and offer customers desserts that suit the time of year. Some of their year-round pastries include their basque cheesecake and calamansi meringue, made with calamansi puree instead of lemon meringue to give it a touch of Filipino flavor, tiramisu spice slices and classic tiramisu, which Adame said is a personal favorite, and their ube doughnut.
As the summer winds down, they still have a selection of treats such as their Halo-halo matcha. Halo-halo is a Filipino shaved ice dessert made with fruits, beans, jellies and ice cream, but Adame also serves it with a homemade mango puree and matcha that she gets from Japan. They also still have pint-ice cream that they make, with flavors like Jasmine, which is the Philippines’ national flower, wild blueberry, sweet corn and more, which will be available until the beginning of September. Other selections include poptart-sized hen pies with seasonal fruit, and a savory pie, called adobo pie, which is a staple Filipino dish.
“We have our specialties that we always offer, like our Basque cheesecake, but there’s no set menu,’ said Adame. “We go through the seasons and whatever is in market is what we use for fruits and stuff, and also whatever the theme [for the time of year] is.”
The bakery emphasizes making goods in small batches to keep pastries fresh and reduce the waste of ingredients. After decades of working in fine dining, she regularly saw food getting thrown away at the end of the day and sought a better solution. Adame donates food to Too Good To Go, an organization that has locations all over the world, dedicated to reducing food waste and reselling it for up to 90% off through parcels and surprise bags through their app.
“I grew up in the Philippines for the first seven years of my life, and we weren’t well off, so we were taught not to throw out food,” said Adame. “And being in fine dining, everything has to be perfect, so there’s a lot of trimmings and we threw out a lot, and I didn’t want that for my bakery.”
The cafe also has a range of delicious coffee treats, like their iced ube latte, which is the cafe’s signature foam coffee, and the coffee they use also supports a great cause, called Cafe Femenino, which supports women farmers in South America. They also have another brand that they’ve been slowly introducing to customers, called Favor Coffee, which is a woman-owned coffee brand based in New York.
Most recently, Adame was invited to be part of the Queens Botanical Garden’s orchid exhibit for the second year in a row, where she made orchid cupcakes for the weekend-long event. In continuing to be part of the community, she plans to have an art contest for kids in the neighborhood for their work to be displayed amongst the artwork in the cafe. She held a similar campaign during the summer, which was very successful.
“My art collection [in the bakery] is from local artists and online artists, so I’m slowly taking things off when people in the neighborhood give me their art,” said Adame. “Last month, we had a little competition for kids, so we want to start doing that and be more part of the community of kids. Maybe when the school opens that we’ll do another competition for the fall or winter.”
Fern and Aurora is open Weds-Fri 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. To learn more, visit their website or follow them @fern.and.aurora.
