Photo courtesy of Johanna's Cakes
Johanna Ortiz might not have guessed that her baking hobby would eventually lead to a full-time brick-and-mortar business—but it did. This past October, she opened Johanna's Cakes & Desserts Café (1239 S. 11th St.) in her childhood neighborhood.
Ortiz’s family moved to Milwaukee from Puerto Rico in November 1982, when she was 7 years old. They stayed in her uncle’s duplex two blocks from her new café. Ortiz recalls that her family didn’t have much money and no vehicle, so they occupied themselves by experimenting in the kitchen. “Everything we ate was made from scratch,” she says. “I can tell you a million things to do with flour!” Their staples were Puerto Rican rice and sancocho, a root vegetable stew with pork.
While attending South Division High School, Ortiz took a culinary class. Her vanilla flan, a baked custard, won a school competition. “I thought I could take baking seriously as a career.” But after high school, she studied business at Milwaukee Area Technical College, got married and had children. As a stay-at-home mom, she operated a home-based daycare and started baking cakes for the kids. The children shared their treats with their parents, and soon Ortiz was getting requests for special order cakes.
“I told them I only do this for fun and for the kids, but then they said they’d pay me,” Ortiz says. “I said, ‘oh, you’ll pay me?’ So, that’s how everything started. It spread really quickly through word of mouth, and it exploded when I formed a Facebook page.”
She ran her daycare and baked on nights and weekends. Orders continued to pour in, and soon her husband, Juan, and her family helped with frosting and decorating. Friends encouraged her to open a brick-and-mortar bakery. Five years ago, Ortiz began scouting locations in her South Side neighborhood, but either rents were too high or the spaces available didn’t fit her vision for a bakery and café.
Then, a friend had noticed a city-owned, foreclosed tavern on 11th and Madison. Through the Wisconsin Women's Business Initiative Corporation (WIBIC), personal savings, help from friends and family and a grant from the City of Milwaukee, Ortiz bought the building in November 2016. After navigating the process of licensing, permits and hiring contractors, she opened shop on Oct. 3, 2019. She credits many for their support, including the community and 12th District alderman, Jose G. Perez.
Now that her doors are finally open, customers can enjoy Puerto Rican specialties such as quesitos, cream cheese-filled pasty puffs topped with syrup. They come in two flavors: original cream cheese, or cream cheese with guava, which has a sweet and salty combination. There are four flavors of flan; vanilla, cream cheese, coconut or pumpkin, which is usually available in November and December—but Ortiz says it can be custom-ordered any time. The coconut flan is available on weekends, or it can be preordered. “Anything we do, even if it’s seasonal, can be preordered,” Ortiz affirms. “If you want pumpkin flan in July, we’ll make it for you.”
The bread pudding is a hot seller, as is the tembleque, a coconut dessert pudding. Ortiz says cakes, like their popular almond-flavored cake, are available whole or by the slice. Cakes for all occasions, as well as platters of mini pastries, can be custom ordered for parties and events.
Savory items at the café include sandwiches such as pork, salami or steak, as well as breakfast sandwiches. The sancocho, one of Ortiz’s childhood favorites, is available in a 32-ounce serving, with a side of white rice and a drink for $13. Other choices include Puerto Rican rice, mofongo—fried, mashed green plantains with garlic and pork rinds—fritters or three varieties of empanadas.
“We love food and we love people,” she enthuses. “It’s more than a business; it’s about sharing and having people enjoy our food. It warms my heart when people say my pastries are so good.”
For more information, visit facebook.com/johannascakesmke.
