Ask a historian: What happened to the famous Ebinger’s bakeries?
Herb from Baltimore asks: “Years ago I lived in Brooklyn and I remember Ebinger’s bakeries and their delicious cakes. What ever happen to them?”
Ebinger’s, a chain of 58 retail stores founded in 1898 on Flatbush Avenue by George and Catherine Ebinger who came from Germany, vanished from Brooklyn like all good things in life, Herb.
Bankrupted in 1972, they left memories on our taste buds — especially of their favorite, the Chocolate Blackout Cake. Elliot Willensky, former Brooklyn Borough Historian, evaluated that pastry in his book, “When Brooklyn Was the World.” He had this to say: “Mmmmmmm.”
While the blackout cake, named for the blackout days of World War II, became the winning favorite, other popular items were lemon chiffon pie, pineapple cheesecake, Boston cream pie, a butter cream cake with three pistachio nuts on top, cocoanut custard pie, a chocolate hard icing cake, chocolate covered “eggs” as well as cupcakes and bread, store sliced on demand. And they were packaged in a distinctive cross-hatched box tied with a slender white string.