Pattycake is as old as a girl's love of sweets. Baking since childhood to satisfy my sweet tooth, i helped my mom make cookies at 6, took baking classes at the rec center at 8, won the Girl Scout regional bake-off at 9 (tha's right!), made weekly chocolate souffles at 10, and, still, layer cakes populate my dreams...

In the beginning of 2003, my partner Seth and i were hanging out at our local Cup O’ Joe coffeehouse. We had been vegan for a few weeks and i, with my lifelong sweet tooth and sugar habit to go with it, was lusting after the cakes on display. “Someone,” i said to Seth, “should make something for us vegans to eat in here besides plain bagels. Some fancy cake or delicious cookies - wouldn’t that be great?" And so, the seeds of an idea were planted in the rich soil of my sugar obsession.

Meanwhile, i had been crafting my own vegan goodies to satiate my cravings and share with friends. Always the response was the same: people would invariably comment on how delicious they were, and were then shocked to find out that the cake or cookies they had just consumed with such gusto were vegan. After a few months, enough people had told me that i should open my own bakery (Carolyn Harding was particularly persuasive and persistent) that i began to actually consider it. When i graduated from college and wanted something i could do from home to bring in the metaphorical dough, it seemed like baking goodies and selling them at our local food co-op might be something that could really work.

We began supplying the Clintonville Community Market with a couple kinds of cookies baked in our home kitchen. The response was amazing - the cashiers said they had never seen anything like the positive response our cookies received. Soon we were baking up a storm, eventually not only for our co-op, but also for a number of other places, including Cup O’ Joe.

The dream had become a reality. In May of 2005, demand necessitated that we move to a commercial kitchen at 3009 N. High Street, which is where you will find us happily baking delicious goodies for you today.

jennie