Carly, Jenny and Bonnie display sweetheart cakes.

It’s finally starting to feel a LITTLE bit like spring around here but I bought a quart of strawberries at the store the other day and they were TERRIBLE. So we’re a little ways from strawberry season but at least the daffodils are blooming!

Kristen on Halloween

In late winter JennyCakes faced a spate of health issues as one employee dealt with a kidney infection, another struggled with a strained ligament in her elbow and the husband of another suffered a terrible shoulder injury. My daughter Lily tore her ACL in her first-ever high school lacrosse scrimmage and I had to have a basal cell carcinoma removed from my left cheek.

Look who coordinated their outfits!

We are all better or at least on the mend, but this stretch of bad luck reminded me that behind all the yummy baked goods at the bakery is a tiny army of people trying their best and going through the myriad of ups, downs and struggles that everyone goes through, health-related and otherwise.

Jenny and long-time friend Martha.

In this post, I celebrate this wild and crazy group of people!

Each person who works at the bakery brings to us a unique set of talents (or “mad skills” as Aidan calls them) and quirks (such as Bonnie’s murmurings as people  select cupcakes — oooh, that’s a good one, ohhhh, that’s one of my favorites). And while clocking long hours together in such a tiny space, we can’t help but share in each other’s lives.

Aidan checking out our ginormous order sheet

Our little band of bakers has fun (Kristen’s response to my question “Is anything in particular a priority for the oven?” was “Perhaps it should think about getting its GED?”), is sometimes stressed out  (mostly due to my propensity for worrying) but no one can argue it’s anything short of extremely real and very human!

Jim at the front counter per usual.

I love this group of people and feel very lucky that they want to work at the bakery. I know, I know, enough sappy stuff!

Strawberry icebox pie

On to what we’re excited about making for the spring! Once we finally get to strawberry season, we’ll bring back our strawberry bread, strawberry icebox pie and cassata cake. We also plan to bring back the JennyCakes — remember those?

One of our JennyCakes

The blueberry slabs (or crumb bars) will be back and the brown sugar cookies were such a success that I think we’ll start selling those on a regular basis as well. You may notice that a few things disappear but remember you can always email me and ask for me to make a batch of them.

Happy Spring!

Jenny