Lucie Franc de Ferriere grew up in the French countryside, and you can see hints of her origins all over her wildly popular new East Village bakeshop, From Lucie. The bakery started as a passion project: She was working at her fiance's Lower East Side restaurant Sunday to Sunday when she decided to go solo, selling her confections via pop-ups and pre-orders.
At the height of the pandemic, her flower-decorated cakes — she describes them as "morsels of a still-life painting" — quickly became a hot commodity, not just within her personal circle but on social media as well. Harry Styles tried her treats; so did Lorde. When the bakery finally opened this year, the lines were out the door, and her wares sell out daily.
Here’s a peek behind the red gingham curtain—a diary of what it’s like to open with Lucie.
7:00 AM
Bakers Stacey Kane, Keila Pineda, and Aubrey Thompson arrive at From Lucie before sunrise to start prepping, pipping, and whipping up buttercream for open at 11 AM. I arrive at 7:30 AM, the cool soft darkness of a new dawn casting a sleepy shadow inside the otherwise lively cafe bakery.
In our prep call, Lucie Franc de Ferriere tells me she’s usually running late. Her mornings consist of a light breakfast with Earl Gray tea and a walk with her dog. Depending on how late she is, she’ll ride her bike or take the bus. On this day, it was a cab.
8:25 AM
She arrives at 8:25 am, and after a warm greeting, slides behind the bar to say hi to her bakers. Kane, Pineda and Thompson return the greeting while pipping buttercream onto sheets of mini cakes in flavors like zesty citrus and gluten-free carrot.
8:30 AM
“I hate waking up in a flurry,” she says, looking fresh as the warm morning light begins to illuminate the shop. Her parents are farmers, she tells BAZAAR, so they wake up early. But she didn’t inherit their internal morning alarm: “I feel like I got run over or something.”
It’s around 8:30 am and the kitchen is in cake mode. Franc de Ferriere checks in on the prep list. As per usual, cakes were baked in the afternoon the day before and individually wrapped in Saran wrap to help keep them extra moist and at perfect temperature for buttercream. The day of the opening, Kane tells me, From Lucie sold around 230 mini cakes and eight sheet cakes (mind you––each sheet cake is 32 slices, so that's around 250 slices). Lucie closes Tuesday and Wednesday to recover and catch up for the weekend rushes––which have been selling out at 1:30 pm latest––and says she’ll fulfill pre-orders when they’ve re-opened. “I also like the idea of having one day off where I can wake up at 9 a.m., have a good breakfast and bake while no one is there,” she says of the closed days.
8:35 AM
At around 8:35 a.m., Franc de Ferriere shows me the basement, where she stores supplies: giant bags of sugar, pastry boxes, paper coffee cups, and heart-shaped cake tins. As we enter, she points to the conveyer belt she bought from a shop that was recently closing down––a nifty gadget that saves backs in the restaurant industry.
8:40 AM
By 8:40 a.m. we’re back up at the cafe. She braids her softly highlighted hair into pigtails while she tells me about the mustard yellow of her shop. “Initially the interior was going to be yellow, inspired by Menton, where my grandmother lives,” she says. But she decided that the color should go on the exterior to convey a sense of identity. Looking at the cafe, she starts to point out the references to her family and friends. There’s the tile numbers outside from her uncle, and the “tommette” tile floor inspired by his kitchen, the paintings and red gingham curtains from her friends, the glass windows as an ode to her parents' 1800s-era glass house tea room in Pessac sur Dordogne near Bordeaux.
8:44 AM
Garbanzo, a neighborhood dog, stops by to say hello.
8:50 AM
Franc de Ferriere's apron is on and she’s carrying a handwritten recipe book and heavy cream cartons to make whipped cream. It's time to start working on the Victoria Sponge cake, which gets layered with a decadent seasonal pear jam — her most English creation, she says.
At first, she used to use her mother's recipes, but she says her most recent strategy is to give them a twist. Straying from strictly sweet desserts where sugar is first and last on the tongue, she says, “I like to cut buttercream with flavors that are more interesting.” Along with the whimsical presentations, this flavor profile part of what people seem to love about the shop.
9:00 AM
Franc de Ferriere lets the butter whip to perfection, but “not too much because it curdles.” To her right, Kane begins to set herself up to build the first pear raspberry sheet cake while Pineda and Thompson focus on cutting mini cakes in half and piping buttercream.
9:07 AM
Whipped cream is ready, cloud-like and vanilla freckled. Franc de Ferriere says you know it's finished when you hold it upside down on a spatula and it stays taut.
The golden sponge cakes sit on cooling racks as Franc de Ferriere brings out an antique sterling silver cake stand with a dainty ruffled etched edge. “It’s from Mother of Junk in Williamsburg,” she notes proudly.
We take a beat and she walks us back to the front of house, where the barista begins to grind coffee and turn on the espresso machine, so she can show BAZAAR her culinary inspiration.
“I only have one book, but that’s because I only need one, it’s my bible,” she pronounces. “Maité is like a French Julia Child from the country-side, she’s my inspiration.”
9:15 AM
We come back to the kitchen: a cake haven. Franc de Ferriere lathers on the pear jam made of ripe anjou pears, ginger, and vanilla bean. “It’s supposed to feel like a warm winter jam you want to put on everything you eat.” She says she’ll jarring and selling seasonal jams like this very soon in a limited quantity.
9:45 AM
Kane cuts the edges of the sheet cake off clean, revealing their spongy-texture and fuchsia raspberry blotches: “this way all the slices are the same.” Egalitarian cake slicing. Now she begins the delicate art of dressing them, beginning with a generous sprinkling of pulverized, freeze-dried raspberries.
9:53 AM
It's time to cut From Lucie’s flourless chocolate cake, which is an egg-rich and traditionally gluten-free pastry called “gateau chocolate." A small piece breaks off and becomes a quality-control snack for Franc de Ferriere. Finally, it’s dusted with a light blanket of powdered sugar. It also gets taken to the front and enshrined in a glass dome as, cake by cake, the counter comes to life.
Gurpreet Singh, Lucie’s fiancé, shows up ready to report for cake duties, discussing mini cake numbers and other shop logistics. Shortly after, an assembly line begins in the front with the cashier, barista, and Singh packing mini cake after mini cake.
10:30 AM
A line begins to form. Around 200 mini cakes, 200 slices of sheet cake, and 60 slices of chocolate gateau and Victoria Sponge are ready.
10:45 AM
The kitchen is fragrant with the fresh scent of flowers. Buds and flowers are pricked into the buttercream of sheet cakes and minis, creating dainty garden beds on chocolate, carrot, lemon, pear, and raspberry confections. The textured dried fruits accompanying them add a country-side feel.
10:52 AM
Only 8 minutes til open. Lucie and Kane discuss flowers, making executive blossom decisions. The salted dark chocolate espresso buttercream mini-cakes get buttercream roses and pink daisies. The second batch of vegan lemon cakes with elderflower icing get a vibrant yellow dollop of lemon curd. And the pistachio sheet cake begins to get sliced into squares.
Cakes get shuffled around: the minis are placed on pan racks to be boxed up and the already-boxed minis are stocked in the pastry case. The scent of flowers and stems overwhelms any waft of sugar or chocolate, and for a moment, florals reign at From Lucie.
The dishwasher arrives.
More flowers are clipped.
It’s down to the wire. The energy rises.
11:05 AM
Franc de Ferriere makes her last front-of-house looks and adjustments. At 11:07 am, the doors finally open to a line of cake enthusiasts. Franc de Ferriere greets them with a smile, as if welcoming guests to her home. By 11:09 am, the first sale is made.
1:30 PM
Cakes have flown off the shelves and From Lucie is effectively sold out.
Andrea Aliseda is a Mexican-American writer and vegan recipe developer based in Los Angeles, CA. Her published work appears in Whetstone, Bon Appetit, Epicurious, and more. Follow her for updates on Instagram at @andrea__aliseda and Twitter at @alisedaandrea.
