"I Baked a Memory"

You may remember that I had the best cake of my life one day at a restaurant named World Peace Café in Sandy Springs. It was a vegan chocolate almond cake, with a thin layer of chocolate ganache on top, little specks of chocolate surprises in every bite, and a creamy almond frosting in between the layers that, all together, made each forkful taste as novel as the first. The manager told me the cake was made by a bakery named Southern Sweets.

Well, I pitched Edible Atlanta (for which I have written numerous articles) about Southern Sweets Bakery, as well as a handful of other local Atlanta food places about which I was impressed and excited. My fabulous editor, Amanda Dew Manning, gave me six assignments and the stories were supposed to run in the winter edition of the magazine. I (and my kids) had a truly spectacular time researching these stories and meeting the folks behind the labels. But, much to a collective sigh of disappointment here in Atlanta, I got the word right before Christmas that Edible Atlanta has folded. It was a beautiful, beautiful publication run by two of the nicest people (Amanda and her husband Robert Manning) I've ever met, but apparently the business model was not profitable enough for them to keep it going. There is the chance it will start up again with new owners--check the parent website at Edible Communities for updates as available.

In the meantime, I didn't want you to miss out on meeting and finding out more about some of these companies, so I will feature them here for the next few Thursdays as my Eating Close to Home posts.

And so, off I went to Southern Sweets Bakery.

Turns out Southern Sweets is a jewel of a joint just down the road from the Dekalb Farmers Market. Expecting a small, nondescript bakery, considering the surrounding industrial area, my socks were blown off when I entered the front door. Enormous, colorful paintings cover the yellow walls. A black and white checkered floor, six wrought-iron bistro tables with chairs, antiques, a couch, whirring ceiling fans, lively music and the smell of love in the oven made it abundantly clear to me that I had fallen into a foodie fantasy world.

And that was just the beginning. Nancy Cole, Southern Sweets’ owner, took me through a taste tour that started with pecan pie, swooped through gingerbread pound cake made with sweet potatoes, crème fraiche coffee cake with homemade crème fraiche, apple and sour cherry pies, blueberry tart, New York-style cheesecake, the store’s best-selling old-fashioned chocolate layer cake, and Nancy’s favorite, coconut layer cake.

“I baked a memory,” she told me. The coconut layer cake was a gift to her father who desperately wanted to taste his mother’s coconut cake again. It took Nancy a year to get the recipe just right. (Boiled custard is the secret!)

You may taste memories when you go to Southern Sweets as well. Southern Sweets calls 40 top restaurants in Atlanta its clients, so there’s a chance that that cake you ate on your birthday or the night he proposed or when you won that big account was made by Southern Sweets.

Not a cake eater? In addition to its wholesale accounts, corporate catering and custom wedding cakes, Southern Sweets serves lunch in its café Monday-through-Saturday from 11 to 5, and by the looks of things, business is brisk and Nancy knows just about everyone. Our conversation was interrupted no less than ten times by customers who had to say hello and update Nancy on some aspect of their lives.

With sandwiches, wraps, salad plates, and more, I’d say skip the nondescript cafeteria at the back of the Dekalb Farmers Market and head on down the street to see Nancy. But don’t be surprised if you see Nancy at the market first—she shops there at least four times a week for the freshest ingredients. She’s the one in the bright red baker’s hat (pictured here with her son, who manages the front of the store).

As for Amanda and Robert? They own Carolina Food Pros, which promotes South Carolina local artisan growers and producers and helps preserve South Carolina's rich culinary heritage. As part of that mission, they run walking tours of Charleston, South Carolina. The New York Times raved about their chocolate tours recently, so if you're in Charleston, check it out. And Amanda and Robert, I look forward to working together again. It was an honor.

"I Baked a Memory"