Mother-daughter team open Buttercream Bakery in Bartlett
Anna Leatherwood grew up sitting on the kitchen counter, baking or cooking alongside her mother.
Now, the mother and daughter pair are at work baking again, this time for anyone who steps into their cozy bakery in Bartlett.
“I can’t remember any time in my life when food was not at the center of our world,” Leatherwood said. “Food is what comforts people and makes them feel relaxed at home. If someone is sad, you feed people; if they’re sick, you feed people.”
Leatherwood and her mother, Margaret Adcock, opened Buttercream Bakery at 5788 Stage Road, Suite 1, on Nov. 28. They were sold out of cookies, chocolate cupcakes, apple hand pies, red velvet doughnuts and other treats before the day had ended.
The dream was always to open a restaurant, Leatherwood said, and she’d thought about trying something once her youngest child started kindergarten next year.
Her husband is a police officer who “works his tail off ” for the family, Leatherwood said, so she wanted to help financially. In July, her parents said they thought there was a way.
By the middle of August, Leatherwood and Adcock signed a lease. Leatherwood’s father and husband gutted and remodeled the place, working nonstop for months.
“It’s been a truly family affair,” Leatherwood said. “It has been a dream and a prayer that God said ‘here you go, I’ve got this for you.’”
In the months leading up to the bakery’s opening, the mother and daughter tested all kinds of recipes. They tested chocolate chip cookies, hand pies, cinnamon sugar doughnuts and more. Sometimes, Leatherwood children’s elementary school teachers were test subjects for the baked sweets.
“It was just fun to go through the process,” Leatherwood said. “You start to live and breathe sugar and flour.”
Their menu includes mini pecan pies, the popular s’mores hand pies, cereal and milk doughnuts, snicker doodle cookies and more. They’re also open to trying new things, Leatherwood said.
“If we want to make something that day, we’re just gonna make it,” she said.
Adcock said it’s both a surprise and natural to find herself opening a bakery with her daughter.
“We’ve always worked closely together,” Adcock said. “We just recently retired and moved over here, and it was just kind of a natural progression for us.”
Buttercream Bakery is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, and from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday. The store is closed Sunday.
Leatherwood also just started keeping the store open until 5 p.m. on Tuesdays. Teachers will get 10 percent off if they bring their employee badge on “Teacher Tuesdays.”
Ultimately, Leatherwood says she hopes people coming to the bakery will feel like they’re being welcomed into her home.
“It gives Bartlett a place to be able to come and enjoy and relax,” she said. “I hope we’ve achieved that.”
Katherine Burgess covers county government and the suburbs. She can be reached at katherine.burgess@commercialappeal.com or followed on Twitter @kathsburgess.