DeReath Times, DeeLee Cakes
There are so many things that Mary Lee Cage passed along to her granddaughter, DeReath Times, of San Jose. Her baking. Her work ethic — “A tub has to stand on its own legs,” she'd say — and her desire to help Black women “better themselves so they can better their children.”
“My grandmother was amazing,” says Times, a Bay Area native and founder of DeeLee Cakes, a cottage pound cake business. “She was my hero. She was also my champion.”
Cage passed away in 2005, but her legacy lives on in the dense, buttery cakes Times bakes and sells in and around the South Bay. The pandemic lockdown sent her into the kitchen in March 2020. By May, with the help of friends and her son, Times was selling her Bundt pan cakes, which start at $40 and come in flavors like sweet potato and red velvet, to friends of friends.
“My brother-from-another-mother posted the cakes on Facebook, and the responses were `OMG, yes' and `Oh hell yes,' ” Times says. “Those kinds of blessings keep coming.”
This month, her busiest ever, brought orders from Netflix and from the nonprofit 100 Black Men of America, which asked for a dozen 12-inch round sweet potato pound cakes. The cake is Times' signature and her bestseller. It has warming spice flavors and is topped with buttercrusted pecans. (In the summer, she makes a lemonade pound cake that sells out quickly.)
“You rarely meet someone who doesn't like pound cake or have a grandmother who made it for them,” she says. “It reminds people of down-home Sunday dinners and Southern barbecues.”
A legal assistant by day, Times spends her nights improving on the recipes Miss
Mary left behind. She guards those closely, but follows her grandmother's advice to “make it better” by using upgraded ingredients, including milk, flour and farm-fresh eggs. She credits Nothing Bundt Cakes for resurrecting the oldfashioned dessert, but her twists, including a chocolate “21 And Over” version topped with Bailey's glaze, are unique.
Times is booked through early March, but will resume taking orders soon after via her website, www.deeleecakes.com. She hopes to open a brick-and-mortar location someday to teach Black women how to bake. Her dream is to start a women's center that would be tied to the bakery, providing jobs, counseling and other resources to women of color.
“My grandmother taught me how to get back up,” she says. “I want to do that for other women.”
“My grandmother taught me how to get back up. I want to do that for other women.”
— DeReath Times