One of the hottest bakeries in New York City recently opened this year. Cheddar News spoke with Clio Goodman, chef and owner of ByClio's Bakery in Brooklyn, to show its interesting, delicious, and unique cake flavors.

<div class="block">One of the hottest bakeries in New York City recently opened this year. Cheddar News spoke with Clio Goodman, chef and owner of ByClio&#39;s Bakery in Brooklyn, to show its interesting, delicious, and unique cake flavors.</div>

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On The Scene: ByClio Bakery and Its Delicious Custom Cakes

We're very jealous of our senior reporter Michelle Cali today. That's because she's on the scene at one of New York's most popular bakeries by Cleo Bakery. Hello, Michelle, what's going on? Hello, I'm here with Cleo Goodman from by Cleo. This is the coolest bakery here in the neighborhood of Guan. So tell me more about how you guys started in 2023. So the bakery itself opened in January of 2023 and this is like full on cake production. But the concept, the the beginning of the journey started in 2021 at the farmers market, but I didn't actually dive into the world of cake until January of 2022. So it's been a very organic journey from the farmer's market to full on bakery. You know what, I'm going to show everyone at home how to frost and make your, make your own frosting and frost the cake. Thanks to you. So let's start with how do you make frosting? So, I do a very, very simple frosting. It's basically a glorified with cream and it's gonna have cream cheese and Greek yogurt and then powdered sugar. And then we're also gonna add a little heavy cream to it. Ok. So what I like to do for the bowl first is I'm gonna add my cream cheese and Greek yogurt and the powdered sugar. And I actually really like to have um all the ingredients cold when I do this. And we're gonna do two ways. First, we're gonna paddle it and then we're gonna whip it. So first we need to paddle it. So why powder versus granulated sugar? It dissolves a lot better. And also it does have a little bit of cornstarch in there. So it's a stabilizer for it. The and it helps stabilize the whipped cream. So does the cream cheese and it adds a little flavor. It's also, I feel like not as sweet and I don't, a lot of the frostings and things I make are not super sweet. So I, I like it. All right. Let's, let's whip it. All right. Let me just plug it. Come on. Yeah, this is where it's possessed. I'm so sorry. Now, how do you know it's whipped to the right, not over whipped. So the first part, we're actually gonna whip it as smooth as possible because we want the cream cheese to break up, smooth out, get nice and creamy and then we're gonna switch over to the uh whisk and pour in the heavy cream. Got it. And when it starts to kind of, how do I explain it, it'll start to go from liquid to solid and I'll do this kind of floral effect where it, like makes these beautiful little like mountain hills and I'll show you when that happens. Um, and that's when I know it's done because you don't wanna over whip it because if you whip it too much it gets kind of curdled. Turns the butter. So you wanna, like, get it between stiff but not overly stiff. Great. Now we're just gonna be really aggressive. And how did you get into baking? Oh my goodness. When I was a kid, I was told I could get paid for a living to eat sugar. And I thought that was the dream and part of it is actually very true. But my family was very into food at breakfast. We would talk about like what we would cook for dinner and we would take field trips to the supermarket and it just was like a very integral part of our family. Earlier, we saw our senior reporter Michelle Castillo get some pointers on how to frost and decorate cake by a baker who has really perfected the art free form frosting. Michelle. What else can you tell us? What do you have for us right now? So I'm here with Cleo Goodwin, who's the owner of my cleo. And yes, you said organic free form frosting and he's gonna show you just what that is and how it looks like. So let's start with, yeah, what is organic free form frosting. So a lot of people are kind of, when they do cakes, they're clinging to this idea of perfection. It has to be, it has to be straight. It can't have any bubbles. But I think there's a lot of beauty and imperfection. You know, when you look at body of waters, they don't have a shape, but they're beautiful. When you look at the Grand Canyon, it doesn't have a perfect shape, but it's beautiful. And I think frosting has the same allure. And I think when you don't take it so seriously, it comes out very painterly or at least my, my customers tell me that my style of frosting is very painterly. It's very artistic versus like me forcing it into a shape. I'm just embracing the shape that it already has. So tell me a little bit more about what are the tips on doing this? I know you said it's more, it's not perfection. I see you're taking it a little bit at a time. Is that the easiest way? And you use a knife, not a spatula. Uh This is a spatula, it's an offset spatula. Um And I do, I take a little bit of the of a time to kind of just get it on the sides. And the thing with this frosting, it's very light. So you don't want to apply a lot of pressure to it. And it's called cream top because when I first started doing this frosting. I actually piled most of it on the top. So I only put a little bit on the sides because the top gets the rest of it and then it's just like this mile high mound of deliciousness. Now, if you guys are watching, I hope you might notice. This has a slight green tinge. This is a macha cream frosting. How do you come up with your flavors? I come up with a couple of different ways. One way is I'm a very adventurous eater. And through the years I've just eaten so many foods and I've gotten to know so many flavors that I kind of think to myself. Well, this actually would taste really good with this and this would actually taste really good with that. Another way is color theory and I have this, this thought that if you go to the supermarket and buy foods only in colors that look good together, they almost always taste good together. Ok? That's a good way. So you have this cake stand that rotates and that's the secret to getting that full round. Right. Exactly. It helps you to kind of like put everything on evenly and if you are looking to do smooth cakes, um, you definitely want one of these, but it is pretty essential. All right, I'd love to give it a try. So how do I do the top? I'm gonna demo for you real quick and then you're gonna do the rest so don't be afraid to really glop it on. Normally, I like to put a ton on, but it's a half moon motion. So it's half moon, half moon, either big one or a little one and your spatula is actually gonna be at an angle. So you're not gonna do it flat. So essentially, it's gonna look something like that. So do I put a glop on. Go ahead. So you put a big and be generous. You can put as much as you want. It's like when your mom told you you can't have all the frosting but you can't or whatever you want to do. Oh my gosh, I'm gonna over frost this cake. But no, the frosting, the good thing about this, it's not very um it's not very sweet. A lot of my customers say it's not too sweet. So I go all the way around or yeah, this is where you, it's kind of meditative. This is where you kind of explore the cake, just move it around and move it around in a way that makes it look pretty to you and hold it at a little bit more of an angle this way. Yeah. So clean off the frosting on the bowl real quick. Uh clean up. Yeah, both sides and then hold it pretend you have like a penny or nickel under it and that's the angle you want to hold it at because you want to try to make those mountains and do long half moon strokes. All right. I definitely need to practice this but would love to add some finishing touches and you have some beautiful bowls of flowers here. Yes. May I, yes, you may. I'm gonna add a couple of flowers one second. Absolutely. While you're frosting. So, how do you know what, how to decorate a cake? You just, is it really just your personal preference? Yeah. I think back in the day like doing it the normal way, stressed me out and I decided I, you know, wanted to break the rules a little bit of what it meant to frost the cake. And I just focused on whether or not I found it pretty and these are edible flowers. These are all edible flowers. I do mostly edible flowers like this and you're powdering with some match on top to give it that finishing touch. Exactly. That kind of gives it that extra green. Now if you need to go to, if you would like to stop by here where um feel free to stop by, it's here all week. It's a permanent location. She started here in 2023 and you have to try some of these delicious cakes back to you. That looks pretty, pretty good. Thank you so much senior reporter Michelle Castillo for those cakes. Delicious. I actually love macha soup. I'm excited about that. I know that looks delicious.