The Name Says It All: Good Cakes and Bakes
When April Anderson went to grad school to pursue an MBA, “Entrepreneurship was never a thought,” she says. When she decided to study pastry arts, it was with the hope of writing a food blog to share her love of baking.
“But once I was taking my classes, I thought, ‘Maybe I want to open a bakery,’” she says. That was in 2010; today she’s the proprietor of Good Cakes and Bakes, selling luscious sweets from a colorful space on Livernois Avenue in Detroit.
Though many old-timey neighborhood bakeries had disappeared, Anderson felt she could buck the trend. “We wanted to offer organic. At the time, you had all these big-box stores with ingredients you couldn’t pronounce. We felt there was a market. People were just starting to want to know more about their food.”
Anderson found help learning the ropes from FoodLab, Build Institute and Eastern Market’s Detroit Kitchen Connect. After “stalking” (her word) Detroit City Distillery co-owner Michael Forsythe, she was offered an opportunity to participate in a pop-up restaurant.
“This was going to be my first time selling to people,” she says. The response was great, prompting her to ask her wife, Michelle: “‘Should we open a bakery?’ Nine weeks later, we opened.”
The space on Detroit’s Avenue of Fashion is spacious and engaging. A large mural covers one wall; exposed ductwork is painted green, yellow and pink. But the star here is the food.
The signature cake is the gooey butter cake, a St. Louis regional specialty. It and the vegan carrot cake are the most popular offerings. Anderson first heard of gooey butter cake on the Food Network. “We drove to St. Louis so we could try it,” she says. “It was so good. It was something I’d never had before. It took me two years to learn how to make it.” At her second pop-up event, “In less than 35 minutes it was gone. So then people started following us, [asking] ‘Where’s that gooey butter cake?’” She has baked it for Oprah and for President Clinton’s staff.
On the day we visited, by-the-piece offerings included four types of cake, Five varieties of cookies and five different sweet bars. The counter was lined with glass domes and jars, the better to ogle the choices. Coffee is also available.
Ingredients are 90 percent organic, with vegan options. Sustainable packaging? Check. Composting? Check. Creating jobs? Check: Bakers are paid $15 an hour and up. “Another thing we do is hire reentering citizens,” Anderson says.
Five years in, the kitchen is already too small. At press time, she was hoping to open a second location in the New Center in January.
For the moment, a cookbook will have to wait. “I just don’t have the time for it right now, but it’s definitely on my list,” Anderson says. She’s an avid collector, and knows what she wants hers to be.
“I want it to be like it’s stained with vanilla because you used it so much.”
Good Cakes and Bakes
19363 Livernois Ave., Detroit
313-468-9915, GoodCakesandBakes.com
