Bakery News
Charming new bakery in Oak Cliff bakes Dallas a new slice of cake
Who could not love a bakery called Crumb and Kettle? It's a new spot opening in the Tyler Station complex in Oak Cliff, specializing in wedding cakes, cake by the slice, coffee, and tea. Crumb stands for the cake, kettle for the tea.
Entrepreneurial owner Heather Harbord has loved baking cakes since she was in college at Baylor, when she just did it for fun. She went on to get a "real" job but slowly transformed her cake hobby into a side business, baking cakes for weddings and other special occasions.
"After I graduated from college, I put myself through a cake-focused culinary school program, and I've been making cakes ever since," she says. "I was doing it on weekends, but I finally quit my full-time job in early 2016 to put all my effort into cakes."
The next logical step: a brick-and-mortar location. She's going into Tyler Station, the century-old factory from innovative developer Monte Anderson.
"He broke it up into spaces for entrepreneurs; there are at least 50 businesses," Harbord says. "Oak Cliff Brewery is the anchor tenant, and then there's a coworking space, yoga, hair stylist, barber, pretty much any kind of business. I love that the space is old and has history, that it's not something brand new."
Her cakes are a little different from the norm in Texas, where cakes tend to run on the icky-sweet side. And she's also not a decorated cake person — none of those cakes that look like top hats or bowling balls.
"I like cakes that look like cake," she says. "And I care first and foremost about how they taste. I don't make a super-sweet icing, I make Swiss butter cream, which is not as sweet as most cakes sold here. But you can eat a whole slice of my cake and not go into a sugar coma."
She'll have an espresso bar with coffee and tea, and cake by the slice every day they're open. There will also be cakes to-go for celebrations and other treats, such as muffins and scones, for the morning crowd. She'll also do cake classes, maybe once a month, possibly structured like a party — similar to the painting classes around town.
"I'm just excited to have a retail shop with really good cake," she says.