The inner sanctum of the Malverne Pastry Shop

It was the day before the village’s Gingerbread Workshop, and Michelangelo LaMendola, 62, was busy baking the cookies in his enormous 30-tray oven at the Malverne Pastry Shop, known throughout Long Island as the baking mecca of the village.

“We have real honey in these cookies,” said LaMendola, as he pulled hot trays out to show a visitor. “You have to be careful working this oven, because if you burn something, you’ve burned 30 trays.”

There was no sign of that happening in the inner sanctum of this Malverne baking institution, which attracts patrons throughout Nassau, Suffolk and Queens counties who crave its delectable treats. Like the Malverne Cinema and Uva Rossa, the pastry shop enjoys a rock solid fan base, which will travel miles for its product. “We do all high quality, high-end cakes here,” said LaMendola, who said the triple berry crème legere and the Napoleon, his signature cake, are the bakery's biggest sellers.

On this particular morning, LaMendola and his team of bakers were producing American cookies here, Italian cookies there, breakfast muffins here, freshly-made icing there. And the smell was incredible. “We have an order to bake 450 gingerbread men for the village, and another 200 for A.N.C.H.O.R.,” said LaMendola, referring to the Town of Hempstead’s program for children and adults with special needs. “It’s the first year we’re doing gingerbread men for that program.” In addition to his gigantic oven with multiple rotating racks, there are two convection ovens in the back of his shop that help create his product. “I don’t have a count of the number of cakes and cookies we make,” said LaMendola. "We do tremendous volume here and sell retail only. No wholesale.” To produce the volume necessary to feed the masses, Malverne Pastry Shop bakers get the ovens going at 2 a.m. on weekdays, and keeps them fired up through most of the day.

Twenty-four years ago when LaMendola purchased the business, it was a German cake shop and he ran it as such for several years. However, four or five years into his ownership, he changed his product to European and American baked goods, and he and his shop’s reputation took off.

Hailing from the southern Sicilian city of Agrigento, LaMendola came to the United States when he was only 12 years old. He eventually started working in a bakery — doing clean-up work mostly — and learned the baking industry’s ropes. Though he went to school to study architectural design, he eventually found himself baking in different establishments throughout Europe.

In the 1980s, LaMendola became a co-owner of a small bakery in Massapequa for about five years. Then, the opportunity to purchase the Malverne Pastry Shop arose and the rest is history.

Though his parents always called him Angelo, LaMendola pointed out to a visitor that his first name is Michelangelo.

We prefer the name "baking god".