At Win Son Bakery, a new vegan treat delights

Marian Bull is a writer, potter and editor living in Brooklyn. She writes a weekly cooking newsletter called Mess Hall. In our new series called Dishing, Marian will get the story behind a tasty dish at a local restaurant.

Win Son Bakery opened in 2019 with just six baked goods on the menu, specializing in Taiwanese American treats like red date cake and pineapple buns. Today that number has now grown to 14, thanks to a larger staff and greater production capacity.

Since its opening days, the bakery’s pastry chef Danielle Spencer had wanted to make Taiwanese taro cakes, also called spiral mooncakes, a highly labor-intensive flaky dough filled with soft, nutty taro filling.

Spencer got a nudge in that direction last year when Susannah Schoolman, who makes a line of vegan butter called Tourlami, showed up at her door with 3 pounds of butter wrapped in ivory-colored wax paper printed with her company’s name, and an accompanying box of flaky biscuits.

Spencer knew that many of her customers were eager for more vegan offerings, and that Schoolman’s product could be an easy swap for the butter that gives the taro cake’s dough its flaky, tender layers.

“I have no experience with vegan baking at all, which is maybe why I am so open to it,” Spencer says. “I have nothing to be super confident about. And once Susannah came and introduced me to the butter, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to revisit the taro cake.”

Schoolman knows how to talk to bakers and pastry chefs; she knows their needs and their preferences because she’s worked in kitchens around the world.

She began working in kitchens at the age of 18, and worked pastry in Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco and Hawaii before moving to Copenhagen to open Hart Bageri, a much-lauded bakery opened in partnership with a Noma alum, where she designed the menu. But she had her eyes set on a new goal even while working in one of Europe’s most esteemed modern bakeries.

After a few years of eating a plant-based diet, Schoolman dreamed of opening her own vegan bakery. But she quickly learned that the vegan butters available to her didn’t serve the needs of pastry chefs who use butter to achieve flaky layers in croissants, the sandy texture of shortbread cookies, and the gloss of buttercream frosting. So she began making her own.

Tourlami launched last August, and Schoolman’s marketing strategy consisted of driving across the city and dropping off butter and baked goods — like she did at Win Son Bakery.

“It’s one thing to bring someone a pound of butter,” she says, “and another thing to bring recipes and pastries to see it in action.”

A handful of restaurants and bakeries across the city – including A&C Super in Williamsburg and the Waverly Inn in the West Village – are now using it, and her reach is slowly expanding to the national level.

Tourlami is visible in Win Son's taro cake, whose exterior is an ethereal swirl of purple and white. When you bite into it, its flaky pastry shell gives way to a gentle, nutty and soft taro filling. Spencer had her own trial period of developing the recipe, trying fillings made with both canned and fresh taro. She landed on fresh taro, which she steams and mashes together with a pinch of sugar, a larger pinch of salt, and a squeeze of lemon juice, to make all the existing flavors sing.

The taro cakes, priced at $5, landed on the menu in late January and will stay there indefinitely, Spencer says, though she may tinker with the fillings. Tourlami’s butter has allowed her to feed her vegan customers well, but it has also let her expand her repertoire. For a chef, she says, accepting what you don’t know can be a strength: “In New York, there can be an industry mentality of, I know everything now. I’m a chef. Sometimes confidence is key, and sometimes confidence can hurt you.”

Correction: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Susannah Schoolman's name.