Cosmic Brownies Are Inspiring American Bakeries

“To be quite honest, it’s just a f*#%ing brownie,” chef Kwame Onwuachi said last year of the Cosmic Brownie-inspired dessert on the menu at Tatiana, his New York City restaurant. Onwuachi plates his spin, coined The Bodega Special, plainly: a lone carob-colored rectangle, glazed with a sheen of ganache and dotted with a scatter of colorful, candy-coated chocolate chips to mimic the packaged original. Next to it sits a ring of ice cream—white as snow and Donettes-flavored in tribute to another corner store classic.

In all its simplicity, the brownie has become a hit at the restaurant; Tatiana sells about 300 a week, making it the restaurant’s most popular dessert.

Onwuachi isn’t the only chef enraptured by playful takes on the corner store staple. Dressed up or strictly faithful, spins on the Cosmic Brownie are everywhere right now.

New York-based bakery chain Chip City serves a version in cookie form, topped with swoops of chocolate frosting and the obligatory candy-coated chocolate chips. In Los Angeles, Fat+Flour’s spin is gluten-free and swaps chips for mini M&Ms. The newly opened Dreamworld Bakes in Philadelphia featured a fudgy olive oil-rich take on the Cosmic Brownie on its soft opening menu, topped with a floral bergamot ganache and bedecked in pearlescent sprinkles.

The widespread affinity for the familiar dessert is part of a larger movement of bakers leaning into personal influences and away from strictly European baking traditions. At Hani’s in New York, headed by Bon Appétit’s own senior test kitchen editor Shilpa Uskokovic and her husband, Miro, the Cosmic Brownie is a top seller—along with other sentimental desserts: cinnamon buns doused in creamy frosting, a crisped rice treat rendered light green with pistachio and halva, carrot cake amped up with brown butter.

After years of European pastry dominance saw bakeries across the US filled with traditional viennoiserie, Miro says, “We’re seeing people going back to the Americana desserts that they grew up eating.” Packaged treats are foundational to American dessert culture, according to Kelsey Bush, chef-owner of the Philadelphia bakery Loretta’s. “Let's not deny why these things are so good,” she says.