Maybe the long overdue chill in the air has reawakened our cave-dweller metabolism, encouraging us to pack on some winter weight, because we have been feeding a powerful craving for sweets over the past few weeks. Not that we’re complaining too much–there is something liberating about scarfing down a doughnut while blaming your Pleistocene-era ancestors for the extra poundage. And there aren’t too many better places to indulge a craving for sugary treats than New York. Over the past two years though, we’ve gotten a little fatigued by the ubiquitous cupcake and have been searching for unusual, as well as unusually tasty, snacks.

One of our favorite haunts is Koryodang, a bakery-café right in the heart of Koreatown’s busiest block on 32nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Koryodang is also easy to locate because of its ultra-high wattage incandescent white interior and dark wood tables; it is the sort of place that looks like it could cure even the most dire case of seasonal affective disorder on the greyest day of the year. The restaurant does a brisk business selling pricey coffee drinks and bubble teas to a mostly Korean clientele, but we rarely take a table inside, choosing instead to browse the large selection of take-away items at the front of the store.

Koryodang is one of the best bakeries in town for fresh traditional Korean walnut cakes, an extraordinary citrus-glazed sweet potato cake (pictured left), as well as surprisingly authentic-tasting Cannelés Bordelais–who knew? But we’ve been sampling the shop’s more unusual baked goods recently, starting with something we thought was a green tea sweet bread with cranberries, walnuts, and streusel topping. When I asked the name of the lurid green cake, I was told simply that it was Koryodang’s own creation and had no English name. The closest anyone could tell me was that it was pronounced ‘clo-eh-ra’. HungryMan was understandably wary of the thing, but quickly changed his mind as soon as he tasted it, commenting that it had a richness, a mellow taste that was a bit like green tea, but rounder, softer. The tang of the cranberries and the crunch of the topping were also perfect touches to this half-bread, half-cake that reminded us a bit of something you might find at a Mexican panaderia. Not the best dessert we’ve ever eaten, but interesting enough to convince us to each down more than one slice.

Eager to find out more about the mystery cake, I went back the next day and asked someone else for more details and found out that the cake is named after its most conspicuous ingredient: chlorella. Yes, that’s algae. The story behind the cake, as we were told, is that Koryodang’s chef wanted to create a winter sweet bread that incorporated some healthy ingredients, so he turned to chlorella, using it as a substitute for green tea. We’re not sure if we quite buy the claim that the Chlorella bread is healthful, but it is certainly much more fun to eat than a wheatgrass smoothie.

Koryodang, 31 West 32nd Street, 212-967-9661.