Kouklet, the Brazilian cake shop, gets a bright new home in South Philadelphia

With its bright yellow facade, could the storefront at 1647 E. Passyunk Ave. be anything but a Brazilian-owned business?

In fact, it’s the new home of Kouklet Brazilian Bakehouse, capping a remarkable decade for pastry chef Mardhory Cepeda.

At 18, she opened a bakery in her native Brazil after graduating from culinary school. As the federal capital, she explained, her hometown of Brasilia is Brazil’s melting pot. She baked treats from all over — the cheese rolls from Minas Gerais known as pão de queijo, the ubiquitous cream-filled sonhos, the stuffed-dough empadas, and most notably the bolo de rolo, the ultra-thin, intricate cake rolls from Pernambuco.

“After a year and a half, I was burned out,” she said. Her father suggested taking a break, perhaps to learn a new language.

She headed to New York City to study English. She found work in restaurants and also found her husband, Edgar Cepeda, a lawyer in the public sector. In 2017, she started baking bolo de rolo again and selling it at markets in the New York City area under the name Kouklet.

Say it “koo-clay.” (”It doesn’t really mean anything,” she said. “It’s a name I came up with for a business I had in high school.”)

Then came a job offer for him in Philadelphia, which felt right because he had done his undergraduate studies at St. Joseph’s University.

“We wanted to change our scene a little bit,” she said. “So we moved here, and I just fell in love with everything. Everyone was just so nice to me. I was very lucky to connect with great people here. I felt like home, and I hadn’t felt that way since I moved to the U.S.”

» READ MORE: Kouklet gets its start as a virtual bakery

Cepeda restarted the business in 2020, and during the pandemic, Kouklet was virtual out of rented space in the Bridesburg Commissary. She sold the rolls at farmers’ markets and at Herman’s Coffee in South Philadelphia, and connected with Goldbelly to ship nationwide.

Last fall, she leased a former rolled ice cream shop two doors from Cantina Los Caballitos and set it up as a bakery with a work room in the back and a display counter running down the middle. Customers line up and check out the display before reaching the register.

Though Cepeda, now 29, is working to expand hours beyond 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday to Sunday, regulars know that it pays to show up first thing for the pick of the sonhos, in such flavors as chocolate (with a chocolate cream filling) and dolce de leche (with a slice of banana on top) as well as the braided, stuffed breads called pão com linguiça e queijo.

Besides the usual guava filling, her bolo de rolo flavors include birthday cake, orange, and caramelized milk, and a Philadelphia version with dark chocolate-covered pretzel cake filled with salted caramel mousse.

Pay special attention to the bolo gelado, a cold coconut cake, and to the pavê de abacaxi, a trifle-custard sold in a clear cup. You also may see a customer or two strolling the Avenue while eating an egg-and-cheese-filled empada; there’s no seating.

Cepeda’s next step is to offer evening pop-ups, on site, of savory dishes, such as pastéis (fried pockets) and coxinha (croquettes).

The idea is to share more Brazilian cuisine and culture. “To many [Americans], Brazilian food is the churrascaria,” she said. “It’s so much more than that.”