The bakery at Bourbon & Baker features such amazing desserts as The Birthday Cake, a golden buttermilk cake filled and iced with a choice of bittersweet sour cream ganache or Swiss buttercream and finished with rainbow sprinkles.

Other cake favorites are the Chocolate Chocolate (bittersweet chocolate ganache poured over a four-layer dark chocolate cake filled with truffle ganache and salted caramel sauce) and the Purple Pride (golden buttermilk cake filled with blackberry jam, iced with Swiss meringue buttercream and finished with purple sprinkles). The latter (pictured) pays homage to Kansas State University, based in Manhattan and home to the purple-and-white Wildcats.

Opened six years ago, Bourbon & Baker is the sister restaurant to fine-dining Harry’s Restaurant, a longtime fixture in Manhattan’s downtown business community. It's led by Kirsten Spear, who trained at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco and started as pastry chef at Harry’s in 2010. She now oversees breads and desserts at both restaurants.

Dessert choices include inventive cookies like the Snack Attack, which is made with all sorts of sweet and salty ingredients: chocolate chips, crushed pretzels, Corn Flakes, potato chips, mini marshmallows, rainbow sprinkles and a pretzel on top. “Sweet and salty is really fun, and people love them,” Spear says of the Snack Attack, a playful cookie meant to remind you of hanging out with friends on a summer sleepover.

Spear also bakes the breads for the small plates menu (inspired by Southern and Midwestern influences) at Bourbon & Baker, like this Kobe slider on a toasted brioche bun with Dijon beaver mustard aioli, caramelized red onion marmalade, pecan bacon, red rock cheddar and a house made pickle spear.

Patrons can order a cornbread slider with smoked pulled pork, cotija cheese, poblano peppers, Menonita cheese and a piquillo pepper coulis. One doesn’t necessarily think of cornbread for a sandwich, but Spear makes it with a yeasted cornbread recipe to add some fluff. The result is delicious.

Bourbon & Baker has implemented a variety of sanitation procedures to keep customers and employees safe during the coronavirus pandemic. This includes wearing masks, hand sanitizing stations located around the restaurant for guests and employee use, scheduled sanitization of high traffic areas and minimized use of shared items and sanitizing between each use.