Press

January 2013-- 417 Magazine

Our Take-and-Bake Cinnamon Rolls are featured in 417 Magazine!  Read the full article here.  You can also get our cinnamon rolls baked hot and fresh for you!  Check out the Pastries section of our menu here. 

Amycakes
308 W. McDaniel St., Springfield, 417-831-6095

It’s no secret that Amy McGehee can make a mean cinnamon roll. In fact, her pillowy, gooey swirled wonders developed such a following that she had several requests for a take-and-bake form. She and her bakery team developed those, and now the rolls are only sold by custom order in pans of six and can be baked fresh in your own kitchen. The par-baked rolls are available in regular or maple pecan and come with instructions and glaze, so you can drizzle the delightful treats with glazy goodness while they’re still hot.  

Don’t Miss The...
Take-and-bake cinnamon rolls in maple pecan or regular with instructions and a tasty glaze
February 2012 Springfield Business Journal

Read the full interview with Amy here!

2/27/2012 2:12:00 PM
A Conversation With ... Amy McGehee
sweetsbyamycakes@gmail.com
Title: Co-owner    
Company: Amycakes LLC
Education: Bachelor’s in arts administration, Drury University
Custom cakes: With an emphasis on special-order cakes, Amy McGehee says one of the most unusual cakes she’s done was a sculpted replica of the Alamo, for a history-buff groom.
Contact: sweetsbyamycakes@gmail.com

Maria Hoover
Features Editor

You opened Amycakes in 2009 in downtown Springfield. How did you get into the baking business?
It’s always been kind of a dream of mine since I was a little girl. I’ve been baking my whole life.

After I graduated from Drury in 2008, I was working a lot as a server in two different restaurants. I started baking out of Finnegan’s Wake and South Avenue Pizza, so that’s when I actually got my business license and got started. Then, I started training with Barb Baker, who owned The Bake House, because I found out she was retiring, and my parents and I decided we wanted to open a family business. I’ve got one full-time and one part-time employee, and me.

What products do you offer?
We do cakes, cupcakes, pies, cookies and cinnamon rolls. … Everything we do is made from scratch. A lot of the recipes are my grandmother’s, and they taste like something Grandma would make. We make a lot of homemade fillings, like fruit compote fillings.

Why did you decide to end walk-in retail sales at the bakery in January?
It was just a personal business decision, because we wanted to be able to have more time to focus on our specialty items. We’re able to do more deliveries out of town to Branson that we wouldn’t have been able to do before, and we’re able to do more seasonal stuff.

How have recent openings of several bakeries – and specifically, cupcake shops – affected your business?
Well, our primary focus is decorated cakes and custom orders, so I haven’t noticed a whole lot of effect on us because (of) our focus.
There are a lot of new cupcake places coming up, and I think that’s great.  … We still do a lot of cupcakes. We just do them with a day’s notice in quantities of six or more.

In January, the Midwest Consumer Price Index edged upward, with food prices increasing 0.8 percent. How do food costs affect your business?
Every year, we look and see how much things have gone up. On eggs and sugar, if we look back to 2009 when we opened, they have gone up quite a bit. We (sometimes) have to go up a little bit on our prices, but we try not to do it too much. We had to go up just a little bit on cupcakes in January – to $24 a dozen – but that was the only thing that increased.

Do you have any business-to-business sales to supply baked goods to local restaurants?
The only one right now is the Coffee Ethic, selling our cinnamon rolls. They do them individually and have a limited quantity (and) finish baking them there so they come out hot and fresh every morning.

Have you taken advantage of daily deal sites such as Groupon? And how do you reach potential customers?
No. Because we’re so small, it’s just not going to work for us right now. We do a lot of social networking sites, and try to post on Facebook or Twitter regularly. We do a trade with KSMU in the morning, so we’ve got a little spot on there. (But) most of it’s just word-of-mouth and social networking sites.

Would you like to expand your staff and shop?
Right now, I like being small. I like having control over what goes out and knowing that our quality is always going to be the best it can be. So I don’t know if I would want to expand, but we’ll see. Right now, it’s me baking and decorating everything.

Your bakery walls are decorated with thank you notes from customers and community groups. Do you donate a lot of baked goods to area organizations?
Yes. We do one big donation a month to a nonprofit on a first-come, first-serve basis, and it’s always something that we bake here, either a gift basket or cupcakes or something. We also donate a cake weekly to Harmony House. We used to (give) our leftovers on Saturdays … all of the stuff in our case, but now that we don’t have the (retail case), we’re just doing a weekly cake for them.

 
December 2011--417 Magazine

We're one of the five best cinnamon rolls in Springfield in 417 Magazine.  Check out the full article here.

Five Best Cinnamon Rolls

Nothing tastes better during the cold of winter than a little warming cinnamon. We like to get our cinnamon fix in the form of an ooey-gooey, fresh-from-the-oven cinnamon roll. We found the five tastiest cinnamon rolls in 417-land, from a super-huge homemade version tucked away inside a coffee shop to a farmers’ market find that’s heavy on softness and spice. Read on, and pick your favorite.

By Katie Pollock Estes
Five Best Cinnamon Rolls
Photo by Kevin O’Riley

1. AmyCakes
$1.99, 308 W. McDaniel St.,
Springfield, sweetsbyamycakes.com
Why we love it: These are huge: Probably 2 inches tall and quite expansive. They have a great cinnamon flavor and are plenty sticky, but they aren’t too gooey. And although they are quite sweet, the cinnamon roll dough has a nice yeasty, buttery flavor that adds a real homemade taste to the roll. These cinnamon rolls are big enough to share, but you’ll want to unroll each soft layer and savor every single bite yourself.
Audition for Cupcake Wars!
See video

We auditioned for Cupcake Wars season 3.  While we didn't hear back from this season (YET!) we will definitely audition again next season.  Here's our audition video:

 
September 2010--417 Magazine

Amycakes was in 417 Magazine!  Read the article and Q&A session called "Sweet Success" here.

Sweet Succes

Learn how the 24-year-old Amycakes Bakery owner got her start.

By Savannah Waszczuk
Sweet Succes
Photo by Kevin O'Riley

Amy McGehee was around 7 years old when her parents bought her an Easy-Bake Oven. A few years after she baked her first Easy-Bake Oven cake, Amy developed a custom recipe for two peanut butter cookies, which she baked after school every day. She dreamed of opening her own bakery since childhood.

Years later, shortly after she graduated from Drury University, McGehee purchased the former The Bakehouse location and opened Amycakes Bakery (308 West McDaniel St., Springfield, 417-831-6095, sweetsbyamycakes.com). The Bakehouse came with several recipes, but most of the recipes served at Amycakes Bakery came from Amy’s grandma or were developed by Amy herself. The bakery sells cupcakes, cookies, sweet rolls and customized cakes.

A Q&A with Amy McGehee

What’s the first thing you ever baked?
“The first thing I baked was little cakes in my Easy-Bake Oven, but I kept wanting to make peanut butter cookies in the real oven. My mom didn’t want me to make full batches of peanut butter cookies, so I made my own peanut butter cookie recipe that made two cookies, and I would make that every day after school.”

What’s your favorite thing you’ve ever made?   
“I’m kind of a choc-o-holic, I have a chocolate butter cake that is my grandmother’s recipe actually, it has a mocha frosting-it’s really moist chocolate cake with frosting.”

What has been your biggest baking disaster?
“Well, our frostings are made with real butter, so if it’s super hot outside, they will start to get soft. On a really hot day I had a cake start to melt away, but I had enough time to redo it, so it wasn’t a complete disaster.”

What’s your favorite dessert?
“Probably our monster cookies. They have peanut butter, oatmeal and chocolate chips, so they’re a good combination.”

What’s your favorite unexpected ingredient to use?
“We use cinnamon in some things that you wouldn’t expect-even our peanut butter cookies have a hint-and I think it really makes them pop.”

What’s your favorite baking tool?
“An icing spatula.”

What’s your favorite show on Food Network?
“My favorite show is Chopped, but I also watch Good Eats and Ace of Cakes.”

Who taught you how to bake?
“My grandma, a lot, I can remember her showing me cobblers and pie crusts and all that, she’s the one in my family who really has a passion for baking.”

Do you like cooking?
“Yes, I do.”

What’s your favorite cookbook?
“I have an entire bookshelf of cookbooks in my apartment, but I don’t know what my favorite one would be.”

What’s your favorite bakery (other than your own?)
“We used to go to Supreme Bakery a lot. They have really good kringles.”

Where do you get your inspiration?
“I did a lot of art in college, I was an art minor in addition to be an arts administration major, so I like the artistic side of baking too. I think that just baking is an art form, in addition to decorating, so that inspires me.”

What’s your food weakness?
“Well, I eat so many sweets here since I have to taste things as I’m making them, so I’m pretty much done with sweets by the time I leave, so if I’m craving something, I’m usually craving salty things. If I were to indulge myself, it would probably be on something that’s really bad for me, like French fries that are really salty and delicious.”

What’s your favorite cake/icing combination?
“Our chocolate cake with our homemade peanut butter icing is awesome. It tastes like a Reese’s peanut butter cup.”

Who is your favorite celebrity chef?
“I like Giada De Laurentiis; all of her stuff tastes really good. If I want to cook something, I know her stuff will taste good.”
May 2010--The Food Channel!

Amycakes is featured on The Food Channel!  Read the article "Amycakes: Baking up a Dream" here.

Amycakes: Baking Up a Dream

Little shop enjoys sweet success

That’s Amy McGehee’s story, but she’s no pampered princess. What Amy has loved to do all her life is bake. As a small child she knew she wanted to own her own bakery some day. That day arrived a few months back, when McGehee bought a little bakeshop in downtown Springfield, Mo., and turned it into Amycakes.

McGehee, now 24, earned a degree in Arts Administration in 2008, but never lost sight of that childhood dream. After training for two months under the previous bakeshop owner, Amy took over the tiny operation by herself, with a little assistance from her mom.

It was her grandmother who really taught Amy to make magic with an oven, Amy says. Her mom ‘didn’t really bake,’ Amy says with a chuckle. But she quickly adds that she’s had great support on her flour-dusted business venture from both of her ‘very supportive parents.’

Off to a successful start, Amycakes now has two full-time employees besides Amy, along with one part-timer. Though the shop is small, it’s loaded with charm. Adorning the walls are paintings of cakes and cupcakes done in oil or watercolor, as well as colorful photos of some of Amycakes’ recent creations, including one of an amazing stack of cinnamon rolls that served as a fun ‘cake’ at a wedding reception. They do traditional wedding cakes, too, but Amy especially enjoys doing custom cakes of all kinds, and tries to accommodate just about any design a customer desires. ‘I’ll never grow tired of creating the perfect dessert,’ she says.

All the cakes, pies, cookies and pastries are baked from scratch at Amycakes. Cinnamon rolls are the shop’s best-seller, Amy says. The shop’s signature item is probably the Amycakes cupcakes, notable for their towering crown of buttercream frosting. But ‘flavor is the most important element to me,’ Amy says. ‘Everything you buy should be as moist, flavorful and delicious as it looks.’ We’ve sampled the baked goodies at Amycakes and can vouch that they taste even better than they look.

Amycakes marketing efforts consist of some tradeouts with local TV and radio stations, and messages delivered via Twitter and Facebook.

Those things weren’t around when little Amy McGehee was tugging on her grandmother’s oven, dreaming of the day when she’d be opening her own bakery.
Valentine's Day at KOLR10

Watch our Valentine's Day treats featured in February of 2010 on Tom Trtan's Ozarks Marketplace.  Here's the link.
September 2009--Springfield Business Journal

We're open!  Read the full article featuring Amycakes in the Springfield Business Journal here.

9/21/2009 9:58:00 AM
Open for Business
Amy McGehee, Amycakes LLC
Amy McGehee, Amycakes LLC

Robin Strathdee
Editorial Intern

Amycakes LLC

Amy McGehee acquired The Bakehouse from Barb Baker in July and reopened the downtown bakery Aug. 3 as Amycakes LLC. McGehee, who graduated from Drury in 2008 with an arts administration degree, said she has been baking since a young age and has completed cake-decorating courses at Ozarks Technical Community College and June's Cakery. At 308 W. McDaniel St., McGehee sells specialty cakes, cupcakes, cookies, pastries and breads. Cake prices range from an 8-inch round for $14 to a 12-inch layer cake for $42, according to www.sweetsbyamycakes.com, where McGehee maintains a blog. She previously operated Amycakes for about a year using the commercial ovens at South Avenue Pizza Co. Hours: 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Phone: (417) 831-6095.

 
September 09-Springfield Business Journal

Nice article about the Bakehouse changing over to Amycakes!  Featured here in the Springfield Business Journal.

9/9/2009 10:34:00 AM
Opinion: Barb the baker passes torch


Rusty Worley
Columnist



As someone who is married to a baker, works next door to a bakery and has lived the past three years two doors from a bread factory, I quickly admit my bias for those who rise early, knead dough and creatively tempt their customers.

Nonetheless, two feel-good stories need to be told amid a year weighed down by stagnant wages, slashed budgets and a surly electorate.

The Bakehouse

Barb Baker has been a pioneer and fixture downtown for 13 years. She built a loyal customer base by delivering quality goods - including her signature cinnamon rolls that commonly arrived at UDA's 7:30 a.m. board meetings, delivered, ironically, by our own staff's Barb Baker - at a fair price. Every week, Springfield's civic and private leaders, such as Police Chief Lynn Rowe, Ozarks Coca-Cola/Dr Pepper Bottling Co. Vice President Sally Hargis and former city manager Tom Finnie, could be seen racing in to pick up specialty breads and rolls.

From her 308 W. McDaniel St. bakery, Baker gathered her goodies and ventured out to the Springfield Regional Farmers Market, Artsfest and Cider Days. She and her husband, George, (whose artwork was featured prominently in the store) established long-lasting friendships with customers and fellow vendors.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that only 50 percent of businesses are still operating five years after they open. The Bakehouse beat those odds the old-fashioned way, and Baker's retirement is well deserved.

Amycakes

August ushered in a new owner, a new name and a new energy.

The bakery walls were painted a chocolate brown. Artwork was hung on the wall for a bustling First Friday. A Web site, www.sweetsbyamycakes.com, beckoned customers to check out the expanded menu. The photo gallery displayed downtown's newest temptations, a blog shared the anticipation of her grand opening. There is no mistaking a new cook is in the kitchen.

Amy McGehee, a 2008 Drury University arts administration graduate, has dreamed of opening her own shop since she was young. She spent the past year baking at South Avenue Pizza, honing her craft and finding hungry friends to test the finished product.

"I've lived downtown for the past two years, and I love the energy of the area," McGehee said. "From art walks to shops to theaters to restaurants, something fun is always around the corner. Working with Barb was a huge help to me, and I feel fortunate to be a part of the downtown community."

The new venture is a family affair. At any given time, McGehee's mom can be seen working the counter and her dad washing pots and pans. The excitement in the air is palatable and contagious.

At a small downtown bakery, we are once again reminded that those who come before us establish strong foundations, and the right ingredients prepared by expert, caring hands will consistently yield products and services people will crave.