These products are a big draw for families and kids, as they are creative, colorful, fun, and very yummy!
Deanna Gonzalez with her graduation certificate for cake and cookie decorating.
Deanna Gonzalez used to bring baked goods to her kids’ school and Girl Scout activities, and to friends’ parties, and always heard great feedback. People would always tell her she was wasting her time giving them away - she should sell them!
Deanna decided to study cake and cookie decorating (she already knew how to run a business), and she graduated just in time to take her hONEy of a Kind Bakery to the next level when the pandemic happened. Deanna had her whole menu planned, but with the pandemic, “that went out the window,” she says, and she started delivering cookies and cakes to people’s porches, making cookie decorating kits for kids, holiday tic-tac-toe cookies, and other custom orders.
In other words, she saved some families’ sanity over the pandemic lockdowns!
You can find hONEY of a Kind online at https://honeyofakind.square.site and on Facebook and Instagram @honeyofakindbakery.
Deanna will be bringing cookies, rolls, macarons, cake jars and dunkers (cutout sugar cookies with frosting to dunk) to the market every other Wednesday during the outdoor season. Her products are a big draw for families and kids, as they are creative, colorful, fun, and very yummy! Believe me, my kids and I have tried them! Holidays are a lot more fun with colorful and fun cookies to decorate and eat!
Kids love Deanna's creativity, AND the cookies are delicious!
What do you love about the Coffee Creek Farmers Market?
Deanna is a new vendor at Coffee Creek Farmers Market, so she doesn’t have a “favorite part” yet of the market. However, she does say that she appreciates getting to know other local producers and small businesses, and she looks forward to seeing how she can incorporate the ingredients of other producers at the market into her baking.
What are some of the challenges and joys of owning your business?
The biggest challenge is the behind-the-scenes work. I don’t just make cookies and cakes. I need to do the marketing, the packaging, the cleaning, ordering supplies, etc. Knowing when holidays are coming up means I need to anticipate them and do my marketing ahead of time for customers to reserve their products. The decorating itself is very time consuming. Many cookies require a long time to decorate, as I need to wait to add some of the details until the first layers of frosting are dry.
I love the reactions I get when people get my products! When kids open a kit or a package of dunkers, or when people taste my products and say: “These are delicious!” The experience of doing this business is a real joy to me.
What do you hope your customers know?
I hope they know that I try to make my products delicious and creative, but also affordable. I love doing products for kids – make an activity for when they’re bored – or make products like mini cake cups for individuals.
From chocolate chip, to creative look-alike designs, to tic-tac-toe, hONEy of a Kind Bakery brings an A-game.
Why is a local food system important to you?
I think of myself as a local food producer. I love to shop local with small-scale producers from around here, like getting soap from local soap makers. I think it’s important to keep profits local.
You can find hONEY of a Kind Bakery every other week at our every Wednesday market at the Coffee Creek Watershed Preserve Pavilion parking lot, April 20-November 2, 2022, from 3-7 PM. Check us out on Facebook and Instagram, and sign up for our mailing list to get notified of all of the vendors' products each week.
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