Looking for a tasty, yet good-looking dessert to serve at your next event or just to satisfy your sweet tooth? Then you may want to check out Murphy’s Specialized Pastry in the Limestone Commons Plaza in Manlius.
Sean Murphy and Colleen Guynup, business partners and pastry chefs of the shop, have been in their Manlius location since the beginning of December, but celebrated the official opening of the business at a ribbon cutting ceremony with Manlius Mayor Paul Whorrall on Jan. 10.
Murphy and Guynup met while working as pastry chefs at the Turning Stone Casino, where they learned many of the skills they use in their shop, where the focus of the product is taste.
“A lot of our recipes use advanced techniques,” Murphy said. “We focused more on refined finishing and flavor combinations. We can make it taste even better, where some other places fail…We want to make a consistent product that looks good every time and tastes great too. ”
Murphy has an associate’s degree in specialized baking and pastry form the Pennsylvania Institute of Culinary Arts. He’s worked on several pastry lines at fine dining establishments in Colorado, including the Penrose Room and The Summit. At the Turning Stone, he managed the fine dining pastry outlets and specialty banquet functions as assistant pastry chef.
“I’ve always known I wanted to go into fine dining,” Murphy said. “Opening my own shop seemed like the next step.”
When Murphy first got the idea to open his own bakery, he originally asked Guynup, who had been working as a pastry cook at the Turning Stone, to work for him. As they developed the idea, Murphy said it made more sense for them to go into it as business partners.
Murphy’s Specialized Pastry offers both special order and walk-in dessert options, including a wide variety of cookies, cakes, cupcakes, cheesecakes, eclairs, wedding cakes, chocolate covered strawberries and cream pies.
The flavor offerings of their desserts include many different options, like chocolate, vanilla, pound cake, red velvet, banana, carrot, sticky toffee, brown sugar spice, caramel orange and lemon meringue, among many more.
“As we get more established, we’ll offer more flavor combinations,” Guynup said. “We want to give time to allow customers to come in and from there we can see what they like.”
Guynup said she likes the freedom of working in a small shop because it allows her and Murphy to try different flavor combinations and allows the daily dessert case to change often.
One of the unique products Murphy’s Specialized Pastry offers are their cream pies, which Guynup said are a “take on traditional pies.”
“We make a cream pie with our buttery short dough crust with a pastry cream in the middle … and on the top we put whipped cream,” Guynup said.
This is the first business Murphy and Guynup have had part in starting, but in the future, the shop hopes to expand to include more pastry options, to add additional employees and beverage options, as well as starting an apprenticeship program, according to Murphy.
“We’re going to keep expanding,” Murphy said. “We want to keep things growing and keep learning new things.”
And so far, business has been good.
“The customers have been very supportive. They’re very welcoming and excited,” Guynup said. “By coming here, you’re supporting small local business and the money stays in the local economy. It helps us grow and helps the town grow.”
Murphy’s Specialized Pastry is located at the Limestone Commons Plaza, 240 W. Seneca St., Manlius. To learn more, go to murphyspastry.com.
Hayleigh Gowans is a reporter for the Eagle Bulletin. She can be reached at [email protected].
