IF WALLS could talk, the unfinished kitchen walls in the old photograph of Cara Farris Adcock at her 10th birthday party would whisper of a sweet future. Adcock returned to the same kitchen where she baked 4-H award-winning applesauce muffins and now bakes sweet treats that celebrate the special occasions of others.
Except for special birthday cakes for her children, Adcock’s baking took a back burner to work and raising a family. She began baking cakes for a Shelbyville restaurant in early 2020, and before long, someone from church asked her to make baseball cookies. Adcock hit a home run and soon received one request after another for her specially decorated cakes, cookies, and cupcakes.
Standing watch over her baking in her childhood home constructed by her father, Jack Farris, and purchased by Adcock and her husband, David, in 2016, are framed family recipes from Cara’s grandmother, Catherine Cartwright, her step-grandmother, Cleo Moore, and her husband’s grandmother, Rachel Howell.
Granny Cartwright’s wooden spoon completes the collection, adding more stories to the walls from the old birthday photo.
Cara didn’t learn to decorate bakery items at home. She learned behind the counters of a Franklin Kroger deli. It was there where Cara learned to ice and decorate cakes with borders and piped roses. Little did she know as a college kid that she’d create Grammy’s Goodies.
Why Grammy?
“Well, because Grammy’s my favorite title. I love being called Grammy and hearing them call me that. And since I did bake different [sweet] things, goodies would work if I opened a bakery with big dreams,” Cara said.
Cara is Grammy to seven grandchildren — one boy and six girls. Balancing her full-time job with baking isn’t easy. Neither is turning down orders to create family time, but Cara is careful not to overbook and, more intentionally, encourages other bakers to sell their treats.
Still, not everything about her baking is challenging.
She said, “Sometimes, when you’re flooding the cookie with icing, it is a little relaxing, but it can be stressful when adding all the details.”
Cara agrees that there’s something about sweet treats that take us back to our childhood. If you grew up in Shelbyville before the mid-’90s, Whitman’s Bakery most always comes to mind.
The sweet aroma welcomed you to Whitman’s as soon as the front door opened and the bell above it chimed. We would stand staring into the display case, iced doughnuts, orange chiffon cakes, baklava, and various cookies and bars, all vying for our attention. But the most memorable for most of us were their birthday cakes and butter cookies.
“That’s where my birthday cakes come from every year,” said Cara. “I remember when I had a cake with a telephone on it when I was 14 because I got a telephone for my birthday.”.
The Whitmans were Cara’s next-door neighbors growing up, and she remembers well that their home smelled just like the bakery. Cara shared a Mother’s Day cupcake a few years ago with Mrs. Whitman — a full-circle experience.
And what’s her favorite thing about her baked goods?
“My favorite thing is making people happy, especially little kids,” she said. “And people saying that it’s the best they’ve ever eaten.”
The unforgettable flavor is often the result of testing many recipes. There’s no better example than the quest for the perfect wedding cake.
“It took me a long time to get it right. My white wedding cake is my best seller. That cake took me the most tries. I probably made six or seven different recipes until it was the perfect flavor, texture, and crumb,” Cara said.
Icings, though, are the most time-consuming.
“Flood icing is a different consistency than the icing for piping, writing, or flowers,” she said. “A little rose has to be really stiff. Sometimes you have three different consistencies.”
However, taste and beautiful works of art are consistently a Grammy’s Goodies trademark, right down to the packaging. No detail is overlooked, and it shows even before the first bite.
There are cookies for every season and reason — Easter peeps, nativity scenes, tea parties, roller skates, anniversaries, baby showers, patriotic-themed, graduation, and sports. You name it, and there’s likely a cookie for it in her wheelhouse. The cupcakes are beautiful mini cakes, but nothing compares to those adorned with roses or hydrangea and themed birthday cakes topped with skateboard ramps, barns, or unicorns.
Behind the Kroger deli counter, the college kid couldn’t imagine a future filled with decorative iced cookies, cakes, and cupcakes. The seven grandchildren that would sweeten her life were still decades away. But it really all started in that childhood kitchen.
Oh, if walls could talk. GN
