Cravings Bakery Opens This Tuesday, March 7th, at Cayadutta Street Location
Those who crave Ashley Alikhan’s homemade cupcakes, cookies and brownies will be pleased and excited to visit 47 Cayadutta Street on March 7th as Cravings Bakery & Café will be officially open for business, starting at 10 a.m. A ribbon cutting ceremony will be held prior to the doors opening.
Ashley was busy on Friday afternoon with preparations for the big event, but she took a few minutes to share her enthusiasm for baking and for family.
Surviving both a COVID pandemic shut down in 2020 and a car crashing into building on West Fulton Street that created devastating damage, she has been sharing updates on the progress of her new building on Cayadutta Street and how she focuses on details of making customers feel invited into the bakery and how she incorporated family into the business.
This post on Cravings’ Facebook Page describes the entryway of the business that once was a fire department facility: “When you walk into the bakery, I want the first feeling that comes over you to be happiness, and the second hunger. I want you to talk about these memories with excitement and remember the details like I do of places I used to go that always brought me joy! I want little details, like walls covered in ‘sprinkles’ to stand out in your mind! Or have you say, ‘the bakery with the pink boxes!’ Or ‘the bakery with 12 or more different cupcake flavors every day to pick from!’ The entryway to the bakery was very important to me, because it’s the first thing you’re walking into, and it’s going to set your entire mood while you’re there!”
Once inside, the walls (painted in official Cake Baker color) showcase Ashley’s love for her grandparents as she has a heart-shaped display of rolling pins dedicated to “Papa” and the menu is written in her grandmother’s handwriting.
Per her FB posts on the Cravings site: “I love my Grandma Betty’s handwriting, and like my Aunt and Sister have, I too have always wanted to get a little tattoo with the exact writing from one of my birthday or Christmas cards from her, that reads ‘love you, Grandma Betty,’ but I’m just too chicken. And one of my most favorites, that I could never mimic, was my other Grandmas. It was perfect, so smooth, and it flowed so gracefully like the musical notes of the loveliest song you’ve ever heard. I admired it everywhere I saw it, and I knew I had to have it in the bakery somewhere, somehow! Much like the rolling pins, one day it hit me, my menu! …. My menu is written with my grandma's handwriting, tears filled my eyes when I picked it up, and I feel her here when I look up at it. It’s perfect, absolutely perfect.”
“My Papa is the one who helped me grow my rolling pin collection! Anywhere he’d go, like an estate sale or garage sale, he’d always search for or ask about any rolling pins they may have. He’d tell them how it was for me at my bakery, and how I hang them in the windows, and that they should stop down to try out my sweets! I can just picture him beaming with pride as he tells them, and it warms my heart whenever I think about it. At the new bakery I wanted to do something special with my collection, even though I loved hanging them in the windows, I wanted something different here. And when I look at this wall, it literally represents the love my papa has and has always had for me, and now Ellie. There are pieces of so many people’s lives here with me now, rolling pins their grandmothers used for years and years and years. I’ve even had some people bring me their families’ rolling pin, someone even made me one, and to say I’m honored because they’d think of me is an understatement.”
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