Baking her way out of stress
Michigan woman’s cheesecake therapy pays off.
LANSING, Mich. – DeAnna Ray-Brown was standing under a 10-foot-by-10-foot hot-pink tent in single-digit temperatures when it struck her: This might be something.
More than a year ago, Ray-Brown was serving her homemade cheesecake from a cooler on weekends, dishing out slices of her creations to customers who shivered while they waited in the bitter cold. She couldn’t believe the weather hadn’t kept them away.
“People were coming outside to a tent to get cheesecake, and it was freezing,” she said. “That’s when I thought, ‘This is something,’ because who does that?”
Ray-Brown, 38, realized then that Everything is Cheesecake, her passion project, had become a viable business.
Today, fans of the mobile cheesecake operation know better than to wait if they want their weekend fix of Ray-Brown’s desserts.
The business is open Friday through Sunday, at a kitchen-equipped trailer. Ray-Brown’s inventory, an ever-changing variety of decadent, and often whimsical, cheesecakes usually sells out within a few hours.
Baking as therapy
Three years ago, Ray-Brown walked into her kitchen, frustrated and drained by a job she had come to hate.
She was looking for an escape. Ray-Brown worked in customer service for a car rental company. Five days a week, she took phone calls from people with service complaints and problems.
Working from home compounded the struggle, she said, because at the end of the workday, she couldn’t let go of her job.
“It was mentally exhausting. I wasn’t a nice person. I wasn’t a good mom. I wasn’t a good fiancee back then.”
So she started baking cheesecakes every day after work, and it changed her.
Her husband, Calshawn Brown, remembers watching his wife’s tension ease.
Baking made her smile again, he said. “She just became a completely different person. It was night and day. She’s calm. She turns the music on. She dances. She’s baking.”
Her positive energy spread throughout the couple’s home, Calshawn Brown said, and set an example for their two daughters, DeAsia Ray, 12, Skylar Brown, 4.
“I think everybody in this house took something from her,” he said.
Ray-Brown said baking cheesecakes helped her find her passion. She turned to family and friends for honest criti- cism after making each one. Then she’d go back and tweak her recipe and technique with the next cake.
“Each time I’d find myself getting a special baking utensil to help me decorate a little bit better. YouTube was my friend. I watched tons of tutorials on decorating our cheesecakes.”
By the time a friend offered to buy one of her cheesecakes, Ray-Brown had been sharpening her skills and already was considering turning her new-found passion into a business.
Two years ago, she set up a table underneath the hot-pink tent on property a family member owned. Still working full-time in customer service, she baked in the evenings and sold cheesecake slices to people who knew her.
Word of mouth helped build a following.
“My husband and I would assemble the pink tent,” Ray-Brown said. “I’d set my table out, everything I needed for what I was offering that day, and all my slices would sell.”
She quit her job in December 2017 and bought a fully equipped food trailer that same year.
‘A taste of heaven’
Annetta Starks has been buying slices from Everything is Cheesecake for a few years now, and says each is “like a taste of heaven.”
“Nothing is like DeAnna’s cheesecakes,” Sparks said. “You can tell she takes pride in what she does.”
On any given weekend, the business offers three to eight kinds of cheesecakes.
There’s Strawberry Shortcake
Crunch, a cheesecake topped with strawberry cake that has a crunch topping along the sides. It’s trimmed with whipped cream, fresh strawberries and a house-made strawberry glaze.
Ray-Brown’s Salted Caramel Apple Strudel cheesecake is topped with her warm homemade apple strudel and drizzled with salted caramel.
The lineup also includes Pineapple Upside Down cheesecake, Turtle Brownie Bottom cheesecake and a Unicorn cheesecake. Cheesecake shakes, cheesecake-filled strawberries and frozen cheesecakes on sticks have been on the menu, too.
Most of Ray-Brown’s creations combine cake, fruits or candy. There are unique crusts to suit each variety, too, made out of everything from brownies to cookies. Some are served with warm toppings, like peach cobbler.
“I feel like food should almost be a party in your mouth,” Ray-Brown said. “You should have different textures, different tastes, and it should all complement each other.”
Once a month, Ray-Brown offers a free meal from the trailer to anyone, whether the person buys cheesecake or not. She advertises the meal in advance on the business Facebook page.
The local community has been good to her, she said, and she wants to give back – and grow.
Ray-Brown hopes to open her own bakery storefront eventually. In the meantime, she wants to introduce Everything is Cheesecake to as many people as possible.
“I’m just grateful that people are loving something that I love to do,” she said.
“My heart is happy.”