Family-run bakery offers whimsical treats
I felt like a kid in a pastry store, saddling up to the counter to get some sweets from the nice lady and her family. The team was dishing out homemade Funfetti-style sugar cookies, fluffy marshmallow rice krispy treats and oatmeal cream pies as big as your face, placing them into paper boxes or cute white vintage plates.
“I’ll have one of everything please, with a cherry limemade to wash it down,” I thought to myself. And then I pretty much did exactly that.
How this bakery in Surprise earned a loyal following
We’d driven for 45 minutes past empty fields and farmlands to get here, to a sleepy shopping center with an AMC movie theater in the West Valley community of Surprise.
Inside, The Boyer Bakery was bustling. Children were running around with snicker doodle cookies in their hands, or sitting at long communal tables with their young parents, dressed to the nines or tattooed with flowy farm dresses.
It seemed like a community event, but this was just a regular weekday morning at the new bakery. Saturdays are when it gets crazy busy, because that’s when the shop brings out their magnum opus, the $25 footlong pop tarts. People will show up an hour before the bakery opens at 8 a.m., creating a line that stretches past the movie theater for a taste of that strawberry or cinnamon brown sugar, says co-owner Abby Boyer.
“We like to have things that are kidfriendly,
but honestly there are a lot of adults that come in,” she said. “The adults come in and love the homemade pop tarts because it reminds them of their childhood. It’s that whole feeling.”
This new storefront is only a couple months old, but the bakery has been gathering a loyal following since 2016. Boyer family matriarch Liz Boyer was always passing out treats to friends and coworkers, who got addicted and wanted to buy them on a regular basis. Working
out of a private kitchen, she and her older daughters eventually started selling in West Valley coffee shops such as Spencer’s Place and Enroute Coffee & Tea House.
Today, she and her seven children, ages 8 to 24, work together behind the counter of their new brick-and-mortar shop. The youngest help with the occasional sweep or dish-wash, while oldest daughter Abby does media outreach and posts beautiful photos of carrot
cake cinnamon rolls on Instagram.
Here’s what to expect in the pastry case
The selection changes daily, but on this weekday morning the pastry case was stocked with brown sugar crumb cakes dusted with clouds of powdered sugar, white chocolate macadamia nut
cookies and peanutty scotcheroo bars topped with a layer of chocolate. The shop even had squares of raw chocolate chip cookie dough underneath a thick layer of pink ganache with confetti sprinkles. Biting in felt scandalous and rapturously sugary, so much that I was only able to handle a taste or two.
The pop tart on the other hand was difficult to tear away from my fingers. Miraculously this day the shop was serving my most favorite flavor, brown sugar cinnamon with maple glaze — the only one I agreed to eat as a child. This pop tart was too big to put in the toaster oven though, as it was about as thick as my hand and had a large pocket of air in the center where the buttery brown sugar crumble was stuffed.
The dough was much cakier than your regular pop tart and was thick like a sugar cookie. The super-sized treat brought back memories of my mom placing one on a paper towel, so I could eat it at the table before I went off to school.
No matter how much she had on her plate, she always made sure that I had a nice breakfast.
Boyer Bakery
Where: 3681 N. Litchfield Road, Surprise.
Hours: Tuesday through Friday 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Sunday and Monday
Price: Cookies $3-$3.50; sweet bars $3.50; scones $3.50
Details: 623-518-2432, theboyerbakery.com.