Little Italy bakery makes the best holiday struffoli in NYC

• Ferrara, a 127-year-old bakery, is one of the last surviving pastry shops in Little Italy.
• It's famous for pastries like cannoli, tricolor cookies, and tiramisu.
• But around the holidays, the most coveted dessert is struffoli, a Neapolitan dish made of baked balls of dough covered in honey.

Following is a full transcript of this video.

Taryn Varricchio: New York City's Little Italy is a fraction of what it used to be, but one surviving bakery is still thriving. It's the main attraction on Grand Street in Lower Manhattan, and it's a staple for Italian pastries. You'll find many traditional desserts, but none more popular than struffoli during the holidays. This is Ferrara's, and it's been making the best holiday struffoli in New York for over 100 years.

Customer: I heard of Ferrara's as a young child. Been coming back ever since, that's about 60 years now. It's an iconic institution that is one of the few remnants left of the neighborhood, and it's great that it can continue.

Taryn: It is cold in Little Italy today, but we're heading to one of the most famous places in this neighborhood. Ferrara's is known for tons of classic pastries, from cannolis to tiramisu to rainbow cookies, but especially struffoli around the holidays. So, we wanna know, why is this the go-to spot for Italian pastries in Little Italy? Let's go find out.

Ferrara's started as a gathering place for Italians on the Lower East Side. In 1892, owners Antonio Ferrara and Enrico Scoppa, who were professional bakers back in Italy, decided to turn the club into a café. The original Caffé A. Ferrara became popular among locals as one of the first and only places to serve espresso in the city. But today, customers come to Ferrara's for much more than a cup of coffee. From famous cannoli to the quintessential tricolor cookie, Ferrara's glass cases are never short of customer favorites.

Customer: The coffee's delicious, and the pastry. Whatever you choose in here is good. It's really good.

Taryn: But as temperatures drop and Christmas comes closer, the coveted pastry turns to struffoli. It's a part of Italian holiday tradition to enjoy this Neapolitan dessert, which is made of little balls of puff-pastry dough covered in honey and shaped into wreaths. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, bakers make 1,300 wreaths of struffoli a day.

Ernest Lepore: People will walk by and understand right away what it is. I put up samples just so people can enjoy and experience it. Which, this is very important to Italians.

Taryn: But there's a reason customers choose a wreath from Ferrara's over other New York pastry shops. Unlike most traditional struffoli, the Ferrara's version isn't fried.

Ernest: So, we bake our struffoli, and a lot of people fry their struffoli. This, being baked, lasts longer, has less calories, and it's lighter. So the Ferrara struffolis float.

Taryn: It's, like, crunchy, but not hard, and a little bit of airiness. And it's just light and sweet. And I just couldn't believe how many of these they sell. A woman walked in as we were sitting here, and she looked over, and she immediately knew that this was struffoli, 'cause this dessert is the dessert to get here around the holidays.

I might have to... now that I know how to make it, could add to the table.

Customer: Struffoli.

Taryn: Struffoli! [laughs]

And Ernest was telling us, thousands and thousands, like, 50,000 orders of struffoli get pushed out of here around the holidays, so that is just mind-blowing to me.

After years of success, it seemed as though nothing could get in Ferrara's way. The bakery was a true destination in the neighborhood and one of the oldest remnants left of Little Italy. But in February 2018, an unexpected turn of events threatened the shop's 125-year history.

Ernest: My sister calls me at 7 o'clock in the morning and says, "The store's on fire."

News anchor: Flames broke out around 7:30 at Angelo's of Mulberry Street.

Ernest: These buildings are very close, and someone flicked a cigarette between the buildings, and a huge fire came up. I'm like, oh, my God, we're in trouble. I walk in, and everybody that's in the kitchen is standing on the sidewalk. And I get to the kitchen, and there's fire coming in. There's nothing I can do. We had to rebuild a third of the bakery.

Taryn: Fortunately, everyone was safe at Ferrara's, and many of the baked goods in the glass cases survived. The bakery only lost two hours of business, but the event had a lasting effect on Ernest and his team.

Ernest: It was like a shift in reality. We've never had a problem, and then all of a sudden, you're walking down the block and you're saying, "Is it still there?"

Taryn: Ferrara's is, in fact, still in its original location from the 1890s, and it's still drawing in crowds for its cups of espresso and freshly baked desserts, maintaining a century-old tradition as one of Little Italy's only surviving pastry shops.

Customer: Every time we always have family visiting, we always bring them. We have to come to Ferrara's because everything is just so delicious.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published in December 2019.