The Fading Art of Preserving the Dead

Life and everything after As Mr. Harvell embalmed the two bodies, massaging stiffness out of the joints and pushing the arterial fluid through the blood vessels, Ms. Velazquez and Xenia Ware, the owner of the funeral home, stood nearby and chatted about clients. One family, they said, had insisted on holding a funeral service in…

Caramel Apple Pie Cake for the Best of Both Worlds

There are pie-eaters and cake-eaters, often fixed in their tastes. But Ovenly, the Greenpoint, Brooklyn, bakery with branches elsewhere in the borough and in Manhattan, has struck a compromise: a cake inspired by pie. Rich six-inch brown sugar cake layers enclose a pie-like salted caramel-apple filling, the entire confection robed in cinnamon buttercream. Serving eight…