RUTHERFORD, N.J. – A SIGN outside Varrelmann’s Bake Shop on Park Avenue in Rutherford reads: “Try our German apple cake.”
At this time of year, though, chances are that customers visiting the 109-year-old shop are looking for something else in addition to, or even instead of, that cake. Like a handful of other New Jersey bakeries with deep European roots, it caters to the nostalgic — in Varrelmann’s case, German transplants, and their children and grandchildren, whose Christmas sweet teeth can be sated only by authentic German stollen. That specialty is a dense, buttery sweet bread full of fruit and sprinkled with vanilla sugar ($16.95 for a one-pound loaf; $32 for a two-pound).
“We have people move away from the area, and they’ll come back this time of year and say, ‘Oh, thank God you’re still here,’ ” said Michael Fencik, 57, the co-owner with Katherine Young, 53. He is of Slovak descent, she of Austrian. The partners, who both live in Lyndhurst, bought the bakery in 1991 and obtained the recipe from Ms. Young’s former employers at a German bakery in Union City, which has since closed.
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