In time for fair season

Branford’s Sharie O’Buck’s bakery on wheels familiar site on town greens

GUILFORD — Cradling an oven-warm cinnamon bun, a customer seemed absorbed, carefully nibbling on the gooey caramel icing while others patiently lined up behind her at the Bake Bake Hooray truck on the Guilford Green.

Not sure what to expect, baker Sharie O’Buck was prepared for a deluge of customers on her first Saturday of the season. With three built-in convection ovens in her custom-trailer, plus a 40-quart stand mixer bolted in place, O’Buck whips up confections on-site in her bakery on wheels. Trays were filled, ready to go and her mixes were on standby in case she ran out. Cinnamony and chocolaty aromas floated in the air.

“We sold out,” she admitted later with a smile.

O’Buck is somewhat of an accidental baker. She never learned to bake when growing up. And while an accomplished home cook with her husband, Matt, she was new to the world of flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder and yeast. She was, however, familiar with the farm market and craft show circuit through her other business, Knit, Knit, Hooray, selling her hand-made sweaters, hats and scarves.

O’Buck was a regular at Dudley Farm market when some food vendors suddenly backed out and the market manager entreated her to whip up some baked goods for the next day, she recalled. After saying yes, she panicked a little but then came up with a plan.

But first, the Branford resident had to figure out what she was allowed to bake in her home kitchen under state law as “cottage food is very, very limited,” O’Buck said. Baked goods and bakery items that are shelf-stable are allowed, as well as some pies and popcorn products, she said.

She settled on simple quick breads, got up around 2 a.m. and starting baking on market day. Her husband and her brother, who was in town, helped with the clean-up and packed up the goodies. She made a chai banana bread, a Dutch apple loaf and an orange cardamom one.

“And that was it … that was a lot,” O’Buck said about her first day. Now she has turned those bread recipes into her popular muffins.

Once O’Buck committed to the farmers market for the season, she wanted to increase her offerings and looked to family recipes for inspiration.

“I remembered all the ladies in the family,” she said. “All the Southern ladies — they all had their specialty. My grandma had five sisters.” One relative did all the pies, another was known for her candy making, and so on, she said.

“I just kind of racked my brain, and I also inherited all my mother’s cooking books, old-fashioned, handwritten cookbooks,” she said. “I wanted to do things that made me feel good.”

She expanded her line to include a dozen twists on the traditional cinnamon bun, which she calls “cinnabuns” — from maple bacon to dulce de leche, which means caramel cream — and stuffed cookies, such as chocolate with peanut butter centers and old-fashioned Southern pecan pies.

O’Buck, who is from Tulsa, Okla., jokes about her pecan pies. “The more I make them during the season, the thicker my Southern accent gets. My grandmother and her sisters would really scold me if I didn’t put out a very good Southern pecan pie.”

Bake Bake Horray, in its first year as a business, is at the Branford Fest, Guilford Fair, Oyster Festival in Milford, The Heirloom Festival in Wethersfield and farmers markets in Guilford, Durham, Coventry, Ledyard, Rocky Hill, Cromwell, Bozrah and Wallingford. Her first special event this year is the upcoming Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival April 14 in New Haven.

She’s built up a fandom. “Our buns get around,” O’Buck said.

Dave Popolizio of Guilford, who oversees the vendors at the Guilford Fair, said his favorite is a blueberry cinnabun with blueberry frosting.

“I’m a sweet guy. I like the sweet stuff on top,” he said. Popolizio is also partial to the Oreo cinnamon bun with chopped Oreos on top. And don’t get him started on the peanut butter stuffed cookie, “a chocolate chip cookie stuffed with peanut butter — that’s absolutely insane. It’s nuts,” he said.

Jamie Adamo from Middlefield tries to follow the Bake, Bake Horray Bakery truck when she can, bringing her three children ages 3, 5 and 7, who love the s’more stuffed cookies. Her fave is the peach snickerdoodle.

“It’s the chocolate inside, and the marshmallow is melted on top, and a graham cracker, too. It’s really fun,” she said. And there’s no sticky hands and faces after noshing the cookies because “the kids lick their fingers clean,” she said with a laugh.

Adamo is also a devotee of the buns. For her husband’s 40th birthday, she said, “We ordered several dozen for our guests.”

That idea caught on with a neighbor, she said, noting that “her mom ordered what looks like a birthday cake-sized cinnamon bun.”

Unlike her early days, O’Buck doesn’t bake several hours ahead anymore but gets to the event early and bakes in the trailer. She came up with the concept of baking on-site, thinking, “Wouldn’t it be really cool if you were here, and you smelled this really delicious cinnamon, and the coffee’s brewing … but you’re in the middle of this really cool market,” she said.

The baker tries to make special recipes for each event. For the cherry blossom festival, she is offering her signature dark chocolate, cherry, Merlot wine “brookies,” a confection that is part cookie, part brownie.

“You get the very nice crunchy edge of the cookie but you get the chewy goodness fudgy in the center,” she said.

Perhaps the most unlikely “cinnamon bun” she creates is for the Garlic Festival in Bethlehem — a maple, bacon, garlic bun that is sweet and savory.

“When I get on location, I crumble up my bacon and I dice up my garlic and I roast it right there and then I frost it,” she explained.

The garlic-topped pastry has many fans, she said, “It is the first thing I sell out on the truck. It is heavenly.”

But not every recipe was a sweet success. The novice baker had her fails.

“It was trial and error,” she said. “Matter of fact, my first cinnamon rolls were kind of like a hockey puck, and I really didn’t understand them. And then I found a blog from a woman that was a parttime baker and a full-time science teacher … and that’s how I tweaked my recipe.”

O’Buck only bakes in her custom-designed trailer, which is parked at a commercial food facility in North Haven. She keeps her flour and refrigerated goods in a storage area there. “So, I have everything in the world that doesn’t go on the truck,” she said.

The baker went with a trailer rather than a typical food truck to get the extra workspace for her baking. “It’s actually very cool,” she said. Her husband who served on a submarine helped with the space-saving design, she noted. “I’m able to use every single inch of that for working,” she said. They tow it on their family pickup truck.

Baking has become her passion. For a special event she may work a 14hour day.

“It has to be because of the amount of hours in the week it takes — it’s incredible.”

Sharie O'Buck didn't grow up baking. She learned on the job, trying to fill a niche at a farmers market. She learned to love it.

Contributed photos Stuffed cookies, s'mores, peanut butter and double chocolate are a few varieties.