Courtesy of Jen's Sweet Treats
After Lopez Bakery closed its Packard Avenue location, Cudahy’s main drag has suffered for several years without a retail bakery. Luckily, baker Jennifer Clark stepped in to fill the void and opened Jen’s Sweet Treats (4745 S. Packard Ave.) in November 2014.
Clark packs both classic and exotic cupcakes and muffins, as well as cinnamon rolls, cookies, sticky buns and more into the small storefront that used to be the Uncanny Soup Company. Clark is from a family of bakers; her parents owned a bakery in her hometown of Aurora, Ill. She also worked for several food-related businesses over the years but still catered events and created muffins and cupcakes on the side to sell at farmers markets.
While renting commercial kitchen space in Bay View from Gouda Girls (of grilled cheese fame), Clark was visiting a friend in Cudahy and noticed a vacant storefront for rent on the corner of Packard and Squire avenues. She circled the block again, contacted the building’s owner the following day and signed a lease.
The main display case stands prominently in the fashionable pink-and-black shop, allowing customers to choose from some of the more than 195 varieties of cupcakes that Clark rotates daily, including customer favorites such as rainbow sherbet, s’mores, pecan pie cheesecake, red velvet and Bugs Bunny Delight—a carrot cake cupcake. Muffin lovers can find classic banana or blueberry, or more unusual flavors like black forest, lemon lime, piña colada or strawberry mango.
The cupcakes and muffins, as well as the cookies, sticky buns, cinnamon rolls, turnovers, cream cakes and other items are family recipes, Clark said. Despite the shop’s name, Jen’s Sweet Treats also serves savory sandwiches and soups, such as cheesy chicken pasta Florentine and Swiss mac ’n’ cheese, also crafted from family recipes.
There’s an old-fashioned candy corner with coin machines that eject childhood favorites like jawbreakers, as well as a table offering more grab-and-go items for purchase such as whole cakes, caramel corn and sweet snack mixes such as the Midwest classic “puppy chow,” made from a base of crispy rice cereal squares, chocolate and peanut butter.
Clark also makes special-occasion cakes and takes custom orders. She has a growing wholesale business that includes Gloria Jean’s Coffee at Southridge Mall and Nomi Coffee in South Milwaukee.
In the short time Jen’s Sweet Treats has had a storefront, Clark said business has been good and she has taken an active role in the community. She’s on the Cudahy Farmers’ Market committee and plans to have a stand there and at other farmers markets. She’s made treats for area schools’ events and decorative star-shaped cookies for Honor Flight, a nonprofit group that flies veterans from General Mitchell International Airport to Washington, D.C., for a day.
Clark plans to add homemade bratwurst to the menu and offer approximately 10 rotating varieties of hand-scooped ice cream by summer. “I plan to pack as much stuff as possible into this little space,” she said with a laugh.
To learn more about Jen’s Sweet Treats, visit jenssweettreats.net.
