Funny Face Bakery

The face on the cookie

A Custom Face Cookie explains the whole bakery in one order: a portrait rendered in icing on a cookie, made to be eaten rather than kept. Photo Cookies work the same way for anyone who would rather hand over a picture than sit for one. Everything else in the case is arranged around that idea, which is why a visit here usually has an occasion attached to it.

The decorating is the craft on display. Designs lean toward pop culture, jokes and slogans rather than piped flowers, and the finish is deliberately loud. Hand-decorated work is slow, and it sets the pace of the counter. This is a cookie shop with a graphic sensibility, closer to a small studio taking commissions than to a bakery turning out a standing daily range.

Beyond the portraits

The plainer end of the case is where the bakery proves it can bake as well as decorate. Gooey Cookies lean soft through the middle, as the name promises. Chocolate Chip Cookies are the benchmark order, the one that tells you whether the dough underneath all that icing stands up on its own.

Icing that has to carry a likeness also has to sit flat and dry hard, which shapes the cookie underneath it: sturdy, level, built to be a surface as much as a sweet. That constraint is the quiet reason the range stays narrow instead of spreading across a full pastry case.

Formats matter here more than they do at most bakeries. Cookies leave in boxes as often as singly, for birthdays, farewells and thank-yous, and the personalized work is what makes a box read as a gift rather than a snack. New York City has no shortage of cookie counters. Funny Face Bakery competes on what is drawn on top.

What to walk out with

Lead with the Custom Face Cookie when the visit is tied to an occasion, and with Photo Cookies when the subject is a pet, a couple or anyone who exists mainly as a camera roll. Both are the reason the bakery is known well beyond its own block.

For a straight sweet stop, take a Gooey Cookie and a Chocolate Chip Cookie and eat them on the walk. That pairing is the fastest read on the kitchen: one soft and rich, one plain and honest, neither hiding behind decoration. It is not a place for a quiet pastry and a newspaper. It is a place you leave carrying a box with a face in it.