I stopped into Two Fat Cats today to see how the new India Street bakery was doing. Whenever I’ve gone into a bake shop where the predominant aromas are ammonia and Lysol then I know I’m in the wrong place. Here I was immediately struck by the buttery smells of pies in the oven and tantalized by a display case filled with frosted cupcakes.

Two Fat Cats certainly has all the makings of being the resurrection of old-fashioned American baking, an art and a promise long out of style.

Baker/proprietor Kristen DuShane was arranging a batch of chocolate chip cookies, which I resisted valiantly—at least for the moment—as we started to chat.

The reason I had stopped in was to order a cake to bring along to a picnic on July 4th. At the moment DuShane is heavy on pies, cookies and cobblers, which I thought were too messy and cumbersome for a beach picnic.

“How about pound cake?” I asked, thinking, how could we make it more interesting? We decided that some flavoring would help and we settled on a lemon pound cake topped by a lemon glaze.

I like the fact that you can order what you want here, as long as it’s in the vernacular of the shop’s repertoire. But some of the items already on display looked pretty tempting. There was the ice box pie, a throwback to back-of-the-box recipes from food producers. This one was based on Nestlé’s chocolate wafers layered with whipped cream and then refrigerated over night. The cookie becomes somewhat soggy, moist with the cream; to me it resembles a luscious ice cream sandwich gone helter-skelter. I can’t wait to try it.

The strawberry rhubarb pies in the display case looked pretty tempting too. I asked Kristin how she makes her dough.

She told me of an unusual method, which is flour mixed with both sweet and salt butters and a small amout of vegetable shortening. It produces a very flaky dough, with lots of buttery flavor remarkable for its even hint of salt in the dough.

Other goodies on the horizon include a bevy of cakes and custards. They’ll all be old- fashioned, some long out of style, like pistachio cake, which I’d never heard of.

Two Fat Cats is a bakery on which to keep a constant eye, filled with the surprises of a nostalgic menu of baked goods happily revived.

To wit: I couldn't help sampling DuShane's chocolate chip cooked before I left. It was the real deal--not one of those humonguous rounds that are everywhere. Hers had the right amount of crispness and hint of molasses from brown sugar tempered by white sugar, nuts, chocolate chips and plenty of butter.

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