Last year, Borinken Cakes owner Rachel Díaz almost lost her bakeshop.
Kitchen issues and low traffic pushed her out of her Logan Square shop in November, but that allowed her to focus on her South Side location. In Garfield Ridge, where Borinken Cakes has been open since 2021, about 80% of residents are Mexican.
Tucked away in a strip mall that includes a barber shop and a dentist’s office, the bakery sometimes gets disregarded or ignored, especially because “Borinken” might be unfamiliar to some residents. (It’s the name the indigenous Taíno peoples gave to the island of Puerto Rico.)
“That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to stay here,” Díaz said. “I live in this area, and I realized there’s not a lot of fun places around here to go to … and there’s not a lot of correct [Puerto Rican] representation over here.”
Despite its previous troubles, the bright and colorful bakeshop is doing better than ever, having been newly embraced by the community after a recent menu expansion.
And since it’s so close to Midway Airport, Díaz said people have dropped in right after flying in from places like New York, Texas and California to try her sweets.
Best known for its soaked Puerto Rican-style cupcakes, Borinken Cakes has been in business eight years. Díaz would do pop-ups at festivals and other events and had a stall at the Harlem Irving Plaza shopping mall in Norridge for a year.
Díaz started with four distinct flavors: original, lemon, almond wedding and Nutella, before her customers began asking for cupcakes soaked in liquids and syrups like piña colada and guava juice. She tops most of them with a dairy-free buttercream, made of soy shortening and sugar, providing a crunchy, sugary crust to counter the soft texture of the cake.
The guava and dulce de leche cakes come with cream cheese icing by default, but customers can request a house-made chantilly icing on a few of the other flavors. They go for $5.25 each.
The business started after Díaz wanted to learn how to bake a traditional Puerto Rican cake for her son’s third birthday party. She also couldn’t find a place anywhere in Chicago that sold the specific type of cake she wanted.
With the help of her aunts, who worked as professional bakers in Puerto Rico, she began baking bizcocho mojadito: spongy, melt-in-your-mouth cake soaked in brandy or rum syrup. The cake is most popular at weddings, birthdays and holidays.
Both of Díaz’s aunts have since died, but she said she makes the mini cakes to honor their legacy.
When Díaz began baking, she was working as a toy designer at a local company, creating products for businesses such as Target and Michaels.
“I used to bring my treats to that company, and people loved them,” Díaz said.
But her employer ended up closing, so she turned to baking full time and launched Borinken Cakes in 2017 with the help of her sister and their mom, Raquel Rodríguez, who is now manager of the shop.
“I was faced with the decision to either go back to corporate … or do a 180 and do a startup business that I’d never thought of taking seriously,” she said.
She moved to Chicago at age 18 from San Juan, Puerto Rico. “But I realized that a lot of people in Chicago were like me, looking for a little bit of that Puerto Rican sweet side that is not found here.”
They now have nine flavors of cupcakes on the menu, with a rotating flavor each month. June’s flavor of the month is fruity pebbles, to celebrate Pride Month, and July’s is lemon raspberry.
In January, Borinken Cakes officially launched a sandwich menu that features pan sobao, which translates to “kneaded bread.” She experimented with her version of the sweet bread, but the process was tedious and expensive.
Pan sobao is a bakery staple in Puerto Rico. It’s typically enjoyed with a cup of coffee or used to make sandwiches and served with dinner plates.
Díaz is working with Mi Pan, a producer from the island, to bring the dough to her shop. Fresh loaves are baked daily at $3.50 for two.
“We started with the basic ham and cheese sandwich, but we wanted to be very Puerto Rican, so we used what we call queso de papa,” which is a type of cheddar cheese, Díaz said.
More of the sandwiches came together after Díaz’s mom “got excited” about that new part of their menu.
Sandwiches start at $8.99 for a 6-inch, but customers can upgrade to a 12-inch with chips and a drink for an additional charge. Some sandwiches, like their popular tripleta sandwich, include pernil, a slow-roasted pulled pork.
Customers can enjoy refreshing tropical drinks and iced coffees — another new addition to the menu — inspired by Puerto Rico, too; their strawberry guava matcha and coquito lattes are bestsellers.
She’s also offered Puerto Rican classics since the bakeshop’s inception, like quesitos, mini pastelillos and various cookies. Moving into her South Side bakery also allowed her to add limber, a frozen treat that comes in a cup, to the menu for $3.
As a mother, Díaz is passionate about making her cafe a safe space for kids and adults on the spectrum. Both of her sons are autistic, and raising them has helped her learn more about it.
“I was very young when I had my firstborn, so I didn’t know a lot about autism,” Díaz said. “I didn’t understand it, and there was not much information back then.”
Parents and kids can find fidget toys, domino sets and decks of cards inside Borinken Cakes to keep busy, and Díaz and her staff never mind turning down the music or lights if it’s too overwhelming.
“I want people to feel welcome. If you’ve ever been to Puerto Rico, everybody treats you with love. Everybody’s super kind. That’s something that you have to be born with,” she said.
