<p>Out in the Rockaways, locals as well as beachgoers (or even folks connecting through JFK) head to this bakery for all kinds of goodies. Danishes filled with seasonal fruit, sandwiches on house-made biscuits and croissants, cake and pie by the slice and many more baked confections change daily but disappear early. Arrive later than mid-afternoon and you’ll probably find a rolled-down security gate and the legend “gone surfing.”</p>

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<p>This Taiwanese shop turns out curry puffs and scallion buns, moon cakes and egg tarts, and sponge cakes flavored with vanilla, strawberry, green tea or a rainbow of all three. The crowd favorite is what the bakery calls 波士頓派: Bōshìdùn pài. Although it lacks the chocolate frosting integral to a classic Boston cream pie, the sponge cake and cream filling could hardly be improved. A single slice is almost impossibly light, and it seems to disappear impossibly fast.</p>

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<p>Chaikhana Sem Sorok, a little café just off the Central Asian thoroughfare of 63rd Drive in Rego Park, proves more than anywhere else that all cuisines are fusion cuisines, if you go back far enough. Every day but Saturday – the Sabbath – loaves of round, crusty bread called non or lepyoshka emerge from the restaurant’s towering brick tadir oven. Meanwhile, samsas, similar to samosas, bake while clinging to the sides of another tile tandir, which was built in Samarkand and shipped to Rego Park.</p>

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<p>The crown jewel of Little Guyana is Sybil’s Bakery, which occupies a Flatiron-like triangular building on the eastern end of Liberty Avenue, in the shadow of the AirTrain that runs from Jamaica to JFK Airport. Sybil’s, a proper restaurant, does a brisk business seven days a week. What we love about their “pepper pot” dish is the soft Guyanese plait bread – and Sybil’s makes the best loaf in town.</p>

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<p>The secret to John Kouyoudjian’s walnut baklava is fresh phyllo dough and a lot of cinnamon and brown sugar. His recipe, which also features a touch of lemon in the very light-handed pouring of syrup, comes from his parents, immigrants from Armenia who founded the bakery in 1980. The Oakland Gardens bakery also makes pistachio baklava reminiscent of Istanbul’s best, buttery and slightly sticky. While the shop is Armenian, Ararat’s customers also hail from Greek, Turkey and Iran.</p>

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<p>Giorgos Sakalis doesn’t use a ruler to make the precise cuts that lead to his geometrically divine and delicious baklava. He measures with his hands, and then, with his chef’s knife, slices clean, even pieces. An immigrant from the island of Nysiros, Greece, Giorgos’s perfectly crisp baklava is unusually stuffed with premium smoked almonds – with the skin still on. The recipes for all of Victory’s pastries hail from Nysiros, and the shop is a well-known supplier of tsoureki, a sweet bread.</p>

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<p>Bukharan music and the smell of baking bread greets those who enter this bakery in Rego Park. The neighborhood is home to much of the borough’s Central Asian Jewish diaspora, and Rokhat bakes up rounds of beautifully stamped Uzbek non. Brothers Roshiel and Rafael Samekhov run the bakery together. They left Uzbekistan and the Bukhara area in 1992, and now package up batches of fresh toke, samsas and non – baked fresh in a tandoor oven – for the local community.</p>

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<p>From the late 1800s, Ridgewood was a predominantly German community. While the neighborhood has much-changed, Rudy’s – opened in 1934 – looks much the same (though its German baking traditions are now in Italian-American hands). Apple strudel and Linzer tarts, Black Forest cake and bienenstich – the cream-filled “bee-sting cake” topped with caramelized almonds – are still prepared from scratch, with the crew following the original recipes for Rudy’s traditional German confections.</p>

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<p>Tortas are modest in appearance (flattish, simple cupcakes) but they taste like breakfast at grandma’s to many homesick Filipinas. And it was a trio of just such women who opened their Filipino coffee shop and bakery, a place to enjoy kape and tortas. Order a kapeng barako (barako coffee) with anise-y torta Cebuana. Or try the torta espesyal, so buttery that it brings pound cake to mind. Our favorite is the cheese ensaymada, a plump and cheesy pastry that’s sweet through and through.</p>

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