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longisland

Jenn Seelig

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This morning, final preparations are underway ahead of what will be a busy holiday weekend for Long Island businesses. From large crowds to rising costs, there's plenty for our bakeries to manage. Now Jen Selig is live inside one of Long Island's oldest bakeries, Reer's Bakery in West Hempstead. I mean that place is legendary, Jen. It absolutely is, and all those chocolate bunnies that you saw in the storefront, it's all made here. Talk about it made on Long Island, right? These are the molds right here. They're massive, and I believe that the family has names for them too, and from December all the way through now, they have gone through 10,000 pounds of chocolate, which is just crazy to wrap your head around. They use this kind of cool looking machine, which Carl, you said this, there's about like 40 pounds of chocolate in here. Right now there's 40, but it does hold up to 200 pounds of chocolate in there. And of course it's very important to keep the, the, the real chocolate. We we use real milk chocolate, real dark chocolate at the right temperature. So right now I'm forcing it around into all the cracks and crevices of the mold so it gets into the ears and the eyes and the nose, and then I'll shake it around and then I put it on this machine here which we call our cha cha machine, and that's allowing the extra chocolate to drip out of there and then I could control it and if you watch carefully, the bunny's gonna do a little cha cha. And that allows the excess chocolate to drip out so we have a nice hollow shell of the chocolate rabbit so that when you bite the chocolate and you go to eat the rabbit, it melts on your tongue instead of having that big chunk of chocolate which you really can't taste because it's not melting on your tongue, but a nice thin piece of chocolate on your tongue, simply heaven. I love it because it's like you're doing it the old fashioned way with a ladle and, and making sure everything's organized. I mean, how many molds do we have? Yeah, there's so many have over 200 different molds, different shapes, different sizes, again, anything from 6 inches up to the 3 ft, even up to the 4 ft, which is a big guy over there. The 4 ft, when we do fill him, does take 2 people to hold. It does hold around 10 pounds of chocolate in there, so that big of an item, that much chocolate rotating it around does take 2 people to handle. And, and God bless your father, 89 years old, and he's still back here making the. Chocolate. Yeah, he enjoys it 23 days a week. He comes in and, uh, he still walks with a cane, but he puts the cane down. He leans on the machine, and he's made probably about 80% of our rabbits. He enjoys it. He says it's therapy. He talks to the rabbits. He has names for them. He enjoys it tremendously. He's been doing it his whole life. It makes you want to support local businesses for sure, and I know it's not just the chocolate. We have bread to show you, cookies, a little bit of everything here at the bakery, so we're gonna send it back to you in the studio for now. All right, Janet, busy morning there. Thank you so much for the update. To.

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This morning, final preps are underway ahead of what will be a busy holiday weekend for Long Island businesses. From large crowds to rising costs, there's plenty for our bakeries to manage and news Long Islands. Jen Selig is live at Long Island's oldest bakery, Reer's and West Hempstead. Good morning, Jen. Good morning guys. Yes, it is Long Island's oldest bakery, family owned, and it's pretty cool. This is Carl. Carl, you're the owner. Last time we chatted, we were talking all things about gingerbread houses, and now we got these massive bunnies that you guys do each and every year. Yes, that's right. Both myself and my father, who's 89, who still comes to work, still makes our chocolate bunnies for us. We've started back in. January we've molded over 10,000 pounds of chocolate into different size bunnies, anything from a 3 ft bunny all the way down to little baby bunnies, 6 inches. Sue, pan the camera over here. Like, look how, and this is all made in-house, right? I mean, we're talking about the 3 inch bunnies, 6-inch bunnies, 3 ft bunnies, yep, all made in-house, all lollipops, all hand colored, everything like that. Uh, tremendous amount of work goes into it. And like I said, we do start all the way back in January, right after the new year. We got our chocolate machines cranking. We've got to talk about these rising costs, you know, you know, economic concerns. How has that affected you guys putting all this together? Well, we have seen about a 25% in cost of our chocolate that we purchased, the raw chocolate. We do blend it ourselves and things like that, so we have seen a 25% cost. We didn't want to pass that 25% along to the customer, so we did have to raise our chocolate prices around 20%. Uh, just to absorb the cost of materials, uh, but again, people need that little bit of sweet indulgence, uh, during the spring, and Carl, uh, he's raffling this big bunny off, so you got to come down to the bakery here in West West Hempstead and, uh, put in your name in the hat to try to win it. That's right. And you have to guess the weight of the bunny and how many baby bunnies we put inside of there. There's babies inside there, which is pretty cool. We're gonna head back in the kitchen to see how all this stuff is made and send it back to you guys in the studio for now. Oh Jen, that is.

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From decorated cakes to classic holiday desserts, one standout this year is their handcrafted three-inch to three-foot chocolate Easter bunnies!

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