Uncle Joey's Rainbow Explosion opens in Farmingdale
The rainbow black-and-white cookie at Uncle Joey's Rainbow Explosion in Farmingdale. Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus
It’s not that rainbow cookies have actually exploded at Uncle Joey’s Rainbow Cookie Explosion, it’s that the concept of rainbow cookies has been blown wide-open. Why, for example, must they be rendered in pink, yellow and green?
There’s no reason at all, according to Joey Veneroni who, with his wife, Jennifer, owns the new store in downtown Farmingdale. His rainbows might be red, white and blue for Independence Day, shades of pink for Valentine’s Day, autumnal hues for Thanksgiving.
Do rainbow cookies even have to be cookies? Of course they could be a cake, the layers thicker but still separated by raspberry jam and the whole works enrobed in chocolate ganache. And then what if the cake were surmounted with a layer of homemade crumb topping?
Could the cookies not also take the shape of a cupcake? With a dripping pool of raspberry jam right in the center, the top frosted with ganache and festooned with, no surprise, rainbow sprinkles?
Would it even be possible to make a cookie that looked like a black and white until you cut into it to reveal the rainbow layers?
The Veneronis’ answers to these and many other questions is a resounding yes.
Joey said that he has been baking since he was 12, and as soon as they could chew and talk, his nieces and nephews declared that “Uncle Joey’s rainbow cookies are the best.” For the last 15 years he worked as a supermarket bakery manager but found the job was becoming increasingly “more corporate, and a lot less creative. What I love is from-scratch baking,” he said.
Veneroni began baking rainbow cookies in 2021 out of a commercial kitchen in Amityville, posting photos on social media and selling at fairs and markets. “I figured I’d give it a whirl,” he recalled. That first Valentine’s Day they were inundated with orders “and it just kept snowballing from there.”
Soon the Rainbow Explosion became a darling of the foodie-influencer set and the Veneronis began thinking about moving the production to a food truck, but they found this location on lower Main Street in Farmingdale and decided to jump straight to brick-and-mortar bakery. The store opened in August.
Traditional rainbow cookies are $20/pound; small cakes are $15, large are $50; cupcakes are $3; black-and-white rainbow cookies are $4.
The future might bring cheesecake into the rainbow mix, or even challah. Stay tuned.
Uncle Joey’s Rainbow Explosions, 451 Main St., Farmingdale, open 3-5 p.m. Wednesday-Friday and 9 a.m.-noon Saturday and Sunday. Consider ordering ahead via email, rainbowexplosionandmore@gmail.com.
