Isgro Pastries
Since 1904
Philadelphia PA
2013

Venerable bake shop turning out cannoli, cakes, cookies, custards, tarts & other Italian pastries.

Philadelphia’s legendary Italian Market bakery makes pastry dreams come true. Over a century of baking obsession, repetition, and precision yields award-winning cannoli, cookies, cakes, and classic Italian sweets. Handmade in small batches and family-run since 1904.


https://www.isgropastries.com/

Isgro’s story begins in rustic Italy, winds through elegant Vienna, and settles in bustling Philadelphia. As a young teenager in Sicily, Mario Isgro’s innate cooking skill earned him a chance to study culinary arts 1,100 miles away in pastry-obsessed Vienna. He excelled in baking and brought his craft to Philadelphia in 1904. Mario opened Isgro Pastries in the food-centric Italian Market at 1009 Christian Street—where it still stands today.

A family-run operation, Isgro Pastries quickly became Philadelphia’s go-to bakery for cannoli, ricotta cookies, sfogliatelle, Italian fruit-filled cookies, almond macaroons, pignoli cookies, butter cookies, torrone, biscotti, rum cake, and so much more.


While the origins of the cupcake remain foggy, the dessert was first documented in 1796 in Amelia Simmons American Cookery. The cupcake resurfaced in the 19th century, this time holding two meanings.

Before the invention of the muffin tin, small cakes were baked in individual ramekins, hence the name cupcake. Meanwhile in Britain, they coined these tiny cakes, “fairy cakes,” thanks to their size.

Cupcakes, also called Number cakes, referred to a new style of cake which they made by measuring out the ingredients by volume, rather than weight. The easy-to-remember recipe required one cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, and four eggs.

By the turn of the century, muffin tins had been invented, and cupcakes, as we know them, became increasingly popular, thanks to their quick baking time and minimal ingredients required. In 1919, Hostess unveiled the first commercial cupcake – their signature chocolate cake with white icing, called surprisingly, the CupCake.