Being an accountant, Stephanie Lavoie is great at crunching numbers, but she also learned at a young age that she relished baking and decorating sugar cookies and custom cakes.
Lavoie is the owner of The Apothebakery in Hanmer and works out of her fully certified basement kitchen.
She’s recently left her day job to focus on doing what she loves.
“My maternal grandmother, Ida, passed away last year. It was always a tradition in the three weeks leading up to Christmas to decorate rich, buttery sugar cookies with our extended family,” she said.
“These weren’t just plain cookies. We had a full layout of icing, sprinkles and shapes to choose from. I have memories of spending the whole afternoon decorating together. “
Lavoie first started the business in 2012 with an aunt.
When her aunt moved away, her two children were born and life got busy in other ways, forcing cakes and cookies to the backburner.
“I then rebranded the business and got started again in 2020 and then last fall, I decided to make it more a permanent and full-time career move,” she said. “I was at a point where I was declining orders because there weren’t enough hours in the day between my day job and parenting and that’s not what I wanted to do.”
Lavoie said fancy cakes with fondant creations require about six to eight hours of decorating from head to toe. The maximum number of orders she can physically complete in a week is about 10, which vary from cookies, to custom cakes and bakery-style desserts.
Lavoie has also started marketing her homemade ice creams.
With a weak stomach herself, she wanted something with fewer additives and developed a custard-based ice cream recipe that she can tolerate and people love.
“I try to offer flavours you won’t find in stores like cinnamon roll and cosmic brownie with rainbow chocolate chips,” she said.
Now what started as a word-of-mouth customer base has morphed into something much more full time, complete with a website full of sample cakes and decor that is 100-per-cent edible with fondant icing.
Lavoie said the cake orders alone offer a range of tasty options, including standard chocolate and vanilla flavours. Salted caramel with a brown sugar and caramel filling is quite popular these days, she said.
In addition to the cake making, Lavoie organizes the ordering, the pick up schedules and sometimes delivery for an additional cost.
But she wouldn’t change all the extra jobs and responsibilities for her old life — dividing her time between calculators and cakes.
“I can flex my day allowing me more time to watch my children grow, and am fortunate to have a partner who urged me to spread my wings and fly, which is exactly what I intend to do,” she said.
To learn more about the Apothebakery, check out the Facebook or Instagram pages, or the website TheApothebakery.ca.
Anastasia Rioux is a writer in Greater Sudbury. Let’s Eat! is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.