Photography by Kathy Tran.
Crumb and Kettle is not your grandmother’s bakery.
With the goal of bringing the baking industry into the modern age, bakery owner Heather Anziani runs Crumb and Kettle a bit differently than a traditional bake shop.
Cakes can be designed on Crumb and Kettle’s website, unlike traditional bakeries where cakes are designed during in-person consultations. Anziani says her virtual process is meant to appeal to a younger crowd.
“I’m 34, and I don’t want to have to call someone to order a cake, or anything,” Anziani says. “We all shop online.”
That being said, all ages are able to enjoy the bakery’s goods when it opens to the public from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. every Saturday.
On that day, Crumb and Kettle offers a selection of cakes-by-the-slice in seven flavors. The flavors lemon blueberry, champagne raspberry, espresso and cookie crumble can be purchased year-round, and three others rotate seasonally.
Outside of cake, customers will find two to three cookie and scone variations. There is also an in-house barista making coffee, tea and other hot drinks. Although the majority of the week is dedicated to baked goods, coffee is not a second thought for Crumb and Kettle.
“It’s important to me that the coffee tastes as good as the cake,” Anziani says.
Most Saturdays, Anziani says, the cake slices sell out before closing.
Crumb and Kettle does not offer traditional tastings, as some people may expect when shopping for a wedding cake. Instead, Anziani says stopping in for a Saturday slice is the best way to test out the flavors.
Anziani went to school in Canada and was trained in French-style baking, so she says the cakes are not as sweet as what some customers may be accustomed to.
“I like to just tell people, it’s not what you typically eat here in the South. It’s a bit more elevated. You can eat a whole slice and not feel like you’re gonna have a tummy ache,” Anziani says.
While Crumb and Kettle does take custom wedding orders, they are limited to two a month so that Anziani is best able to focus on the customers and their cake designs.
Whereas Anziani started her baking career focusing on wedding cakes, she says the pandemic stalled the wedding industry, and now birthday cakes are Crumb and Kettle’s biggest item.
For birthdays, anniversaries or any other events, Crumb and Kettle has predesigned cakes that can be ordered as few as five days in advance, and picked up on Fridays and Saturdays. The designs all fit into varying aesthetics, such as “modern marble” and “artsy,” and a variety of cake toppers can make the cakes fully customized.
Crumb and Kettle also seasonally flavored holiday cakes, which can be preordered. During Thanksgiving, customers could order pumpkin spice cakes with cream cheese buttercream and caramel swirl.
The next holiday that cakes will be available for preorder is Valentine’s Day.
Anziani says everything is made from scratch in house, including the ice cream “crumb cups” that the bakery offers year-round, although they are most popular in the summer. Made of half cake, half ice cream layered together, Anziani’s husband came up with the idea for the creation to utilize cake trimmings as part of the bakery’s zero-waste goal.
“A big tenant of the business for me is to limit waste,” Anziani says. “So we compost all of our food waste that is actual waste. And then anything trimmed off the cake goes back into ice cream. If we had leftover blueberry scones from the summer, those went into lemon ice cream. We’re just trying to limit every kind of waste possible.”
In addition to their cake offerings and Saturday openings, Crumb and Kettle rents out their kitchen to other bakers.
Anziani says that when she was starting her business, she often relied on borrowing kitchens from friends and family, and she hopes that by offering her space, other cooks will be able to feel supported while starting out.
Information about Crumb and Kettle’s kitchen rental, as well as details for cake ordering, can be found on their website.
Crumb and Kettle, 1300 S. Polk St.
