Dessert picnic draws dozens of sweet-toothed bakers to midtown Sacramento
Dozens of sweet cakes, cookies and other treats were center stage at the E. Claire Raley Studios for the Performing Arts in midtown Saturday morning.
The Sugar Social dessert picnic convened Sacramento’s community of cottage bakers — who run baking small baking businesses out of their home kitchens — in an end-of-summer celebration. Organizers Vy Nguyen and Gabbie Gonzales debuted their cottage baker community collective, Micro but Mighty Bakers, with this inaugural event.
“It’s so great to have so many supporters out here,” said Gonzales, who owns her own cottage baking business called Panza Baby Bakeshop. “I feel like I’m in the mode of like, ‘What could we have done better?’ But I think right now it’s wonderful and people are really enjoying themselves.”
Bakers and attendees piled takeout plates high with kaleidoscopes of multicolored desserts, sharing bites of their favorites and taking photos of recipe cards bakers displayed in front of their creations.
Dessert flavors and styles spanned a wide range of cultures, from American classics to fusion sweets with flavors like matcha and chai. One baker brought mango sago, a refreshing sweetened condensed milk dessert with tapioca and mango, often found in Southeast Asian island nations.
By 11 a.m. — only 30 minutes into the event — the majority of desserts were already gone, with stray smears of frosting and a smattering of crumbs across long tables remaining as echoes of the sweet-toothed attendees’ earlier mad dash.
Many people shared feelings of optimism for the future of baking events like Sugar Social in the area.
“This is like a taster,” said attendee Whitney Owens. “I feel like this is like a little open house at the beginning of the school year, and then you get to go to the open house at the end (and see how things changed).”
Road to Sugar Social
Nguyen said she and Gonzales met earlier this year while organizing mutual aid fundraising events in Sacramento, bonding over their shared passion for baking.
“We had so much fun connecting with cottage bakers, so we decided to build something out where we’re connecting ... other cottage bakers with a community of folks,” said Nguyen, who runs SugarBean Cake Shop.
Nguyen emphasized the unique struggles cottage bakers face — as they do not have brick-and-mortar bakeries open to the public, they must resort to marketing their businesses online and through word-of-mouth with other restaurateurs in their area.
She and Gonzales hope to become a resource for the community of home entrepreneurs, providing help with navigating the required paperwork as well as building a support system.
BennyJean Peneyra, pastry chef at Chu Mai in Sacramento and participant at Sugar Social, said resources like this are very important for the region’s home bakers.
“There’s a lot of cottage bakers that need support around these parts,” he said.
For their first event as Micro but Mighty Bakers, the pair was inspired by the success of San Francisco’s Cake Picnic earlier this year, which gathered more than 1,300 cakes in an afternoon.
“This is a great way to debut — it can become bigger,” Peneyra said.
For the picnic, Peneyra made a spin-off of a dessert found at Chu Mai. His matcha-cheesecake swiss roll slices flew off the pink tablecloth-clad tables at the midtown venue.
Nguyen and Gonzales were already successful in making connections with small baking entrepreneurs ahead of Sugar Social. Nhung Nguyen, of Day La Flour, found out about Micro but Mighty Bakers in this way — her friends, Crystal Huynh-Kim and Charley Phung of Chloe Ca Phe, connected her with the organization.
“I think that it’s about time that we all meet and come to the table,” Nhung said.
For Sugar Social, Nhung chose to emphasize classic summer flavors with her mochi cakes. Seasonal peaches were glazed with miso and ginger beer then delicately piped with whipped cream creme fraiche and garnished with a mint leaf from her garden.
Connecting with baking community
Bakers new and experienced said they enjoyed getting the opportunity to unite with one another. They often only meet through social media.
“To be to be able to be among other like-minded bakers here, it feels really good,” said Imann Khan, owner of Sukoon Bakery. “It is a struggle sometimes ... but seeing this, you see everybody who’s been through the same thing ... it makes me really happy.”
Khan started Sukoon Bakery in April, hoping to share her Pakistani culture through fusion dessert dishes. Her gold-flaked rasmalai milk cake — made with flattened and sweeted cheese patties similar to paneer — was an instant hit at the picnic, much to Khan’s surprise.
“I actually brought (a rosewater version of the cake) because I thought it would be more popular, because it’s a flavor that everybody’s already kind of familiar with,” she said. “But as I can see, I guess everybody’s reaching for the rasmalai just to try new flavors.”
Dyana O’Brien, known as The Rockabilly Baker, represented retro American bakes with her strawberry-prosecco angel food cake, raspberry pistachio swiss roll and a classic carrot cake, all made with locally sourced produce. Though she has been baking as long as she can remember — even having a stint as a contestant on “The Great American Baking Show” — Sugar Social marked her first event as a full-time baker after retiring from a corporate career.
“(The cottage baking community is) so welcoming, everybody has been so lovely,” O’Brien said.
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