Contributed photo by Karen Watkins / Blondies Cakes and Pies handles custom orders with 24-48 hours’ notice.“You can only burn so many stoves and microwaves before you think, ‘Maybe we should get our own place,'” laughs Karen Watkins of Blondies Cakes and Pies. She and her best friend, Nylas Hall, have taken their baking from a pandemic pastime to a community favorite in just over three months, but naturally it took some trial and error.
The two have been friends for nearly three decades, and during the pandemic they joined the 4.4 million Americans who saw an opportunity to take a chance on themselves, opening a brick-and-mortar bakery in Rossville.
“We worked in offices,” Hall said, describing her career path pre-COVID as “uninspired.”
“The situation with COVID had just changed everything, so we started baking more and more, and people started hearing about us,” she added. “Eventually, we looked at each other and thought, ‘Why not?'”
The decision to go into business for themselves is something the duo can attribute to the influence and teachings of their mothers, both cake decorators, wedding planners and hairdressers with creative Southern hearts. When venturing out on their own, Watkins leaned into the examples shown to them from their maternal mentors on crafting works of marital art.