Holiday Long Island bakery treats you should try this season

Hanukkah, Yuletide, Christmas, Kwanzaa — on dining-room tables, these fêtes take the shape of starry sugar cookies, spangled with sprinkles; pfeffernüsse, prickly with pepper; delicate linzertorte, layered with jam.

Around the world, many of the season’s favorite sweets recall stories that anchor our cultural identities. Jewish people eat jelly doughnuts to rejoice in the temple oil that burned eight days upon Jerusalem’s liberation from Greek rule some 2,200 years ago. As New Year’s approaches, Greeks find tradition in vasilopita, an orange-scented sponge cake, with a coin tucked inside that purportedly brings luck to whomever finds it.

Right now, bakeries across Long Island are rolling out dough in delicious diversity. So this year, as you dust off the traditions that decorate your holiday table — or dash out to your fifth festive party this week — why not stop to sample something new?

Colombia: Buñuelos

Throughout Latin America, humble, fried-dough buñuelos are a coffee-time staple year-round, but they’re inescapable during the holidays. These sweet fritters (which vary in size and shape from Cuba to Chile) came to the New World with Spanish conquistadors.

In this hemisphere, Colombians generally sculpt their buñuelos into perfect golden spheres, all gentle crisp outside and bouncy white cake inside, often richened with cheese. In Hempstead and Westbury, La Sevillana Bakery makes them with blended yuca and wheat flours. Priced at $2 apiece, their quiet, barely-there sweetness invites bite after bite — and dunking in coffee. At Christmas, it’s typical to serve them with custardy natilla or rich hot chocolate.

FIND IT Antojitos Bakery (38 W. Montauk Hwy., Hampton Bays; 631-594-5501), La Sevillana Bakery (372 Fulton Ave., Hempstead; 516-538-9857 and 481 Maple Ave., Westbury; 516-280-6050), Paisa Pan Bakery (385 Horseblock Rd., Farmingville; 631-732-3409), Punto Rojo Bakery (locations in Glen Cove, Freeport, Hicksville and Uniondale, puntorojocafe.com)

Greece: Melomakarona, Kourabiedes, Vasilopita

Ancient Greeks served honeyed melomakarona at funerals. These days, the soft walnut-studded treats ($1.50 each) are a Christmastime go-to. Bakers dip each cookie in honey while it’s still oven-hot, and with each bite, it dissolves on your tongue, flooding your senses with cinnamon and cloves and a hint of orange zest.

In contrast, kourabiedes — buttery half-moon-shaped shortbreads, another Christmas standby — are crunchy with roasted almonds and dusted with powdered sugar.

The New Year's treat vasilopita is named for the Greek bishop St. Basil, who collected valuables from his flock to pay off the Romans and free his city in the fourth century But the tyrants fled, leaving Basil to return each family’s ransomed treasures hidden inside a pastry. So let us eat cake!

FIND IT SugarBerry Bakery (312 Sunrise Hwy., Rockville Centre; 516-764-2881, sugarberrybakery.com)

Israel: Sufganiyot

Across the Jewish diaspora, Hanukkah’s pillowy kosher doughnuts pay homage to the oil that burned for a miraculous eight days during the victorious rededication of Jerusalem’s Second Temple in the second century B.C.

In Great Neck, Noir Bakery & Café owners Nancy and Tiran Sinai import sufganiyot from their native Israel, then stuff them with housemade chocolate custard, halvah cream or strawberry jam. “We are quite famous for this,” Nancy Sinai said, adding that the week before Hanukkah brings lines out the door for doughnuts — order ahead if you require assurances.

Elsewhere on Long Island, kosher bakeries invariably stock traditional jelly sufganiyot, and in West Hempstead, the Riesterer family (baking since 1931) turns out fresh, hand-rolled rounds ($1.75 each) filled with raspberry or apricot jam, or chocolate pudding, vanilla custard or caramel … with or without frosting.

FIND IT Noir Bakery & Café (25 Cutter Mill Rd., Great Neck; 516-773-0973), Riesterer’s Bakery (282 Hempstead Ave., West Hempstead; 516-481-7636; rbakery.com), Wall’s Bake Shop (1336 Broadway, Hewlett; 516-374-3771)

Jamaica: Black Cake

In Jamaica and throughout the Caribbean, nary a Christmas dinner ends without a slice of boozy black cake. Fragrant with spices and sweetened thrice with sugar — molasses, browning and rum — this cake is nearly molten with dried fruits, which soak in Port before being puréed and folded into the batter.

Black cake’s culinary roots tangle through centuries of slavery to converge on England’s brandy-soaked Christmas pudding, enjoyed by slavers when the island was a sugar cane colony. But don’t let that stop you from savoring the richness and depth of this distinctive delicacy — or from reveling in the spirit and grit of the bakers who took a tyrant’s treat and lovingly caressed it for generations until it became fully their own.

In Hempstead, Sam’s Caribbean Marketplace crafts cakes of one to four pounds at $25 per pound, or call for a 10-inch round at Baldwin’s Jamaican Flavors ($70).

FIND IT Sam’s Caribbean Marketplace (225 Hempstead Tpke., West Hempstead; 516-481-6602, sams247.biz), Jamaican Flavors (1705 Grand Ave., North Baldwin; 516-379-0060, jamaicanflavors.com)

Scandinavia: Kringer, Spiced Cookies

In Sweden, Christmastime officially arrives on Dec. 13, when families don white robes and candled crowns to parade through the streets celebrating martyred St. Lucia. According to legend, Lucia lighted her way through the Roman catacombs in similar fashion, delivering food to exiled Christians in the third century — until her fiancee had her killed by Roman authorities when she chose a life of Christian piety over her betrothed.

Northport’s Copenhagen Bakery & Café turns out traditional Scandinavian pastries — kringler, Yule kager — and spiced cookies such as thin-cut brunkager, laced with slivered almonds, and a panoply of other northern-European holiday sweets, available per piece, or arranged into platters starting at around $35.

FIND IT 75 Woodbine Ave., Northport; 631-754-3256, copenhagenbakery.com