Mallory Mason owns Daughters Baking.
Q: Tell us briefly about the restaurant.
A: Hello, my name is Mallory Mason. I'm the owner of Daughters Baking. We are a cake bakery that's located in Mountain Brook Village just to the left of Bromberg's. We specialize in naked-style cakes.We offer cake cups, mini cakes, larger cakes, birthday cakes and we do a lot of wedding cakes as well. We— We allow for last minute pickups of cakes in our store. We try to have them available at all times so that people can pick them up whenever or preorder. And then we also wholesale our cake cups to all the Piggly Wigglys in Birmingham. We also wholesale to several other businesses in Birmingham, such as Soho Standard, Melt, and Davenport's.
Q: What is your favorite menu item?
A: My current favorite item that we make is our banana layer cake. That is a seasonal item that we make around August. It's basically a mixture of banana bread and banana pudding. Um, it's so good. And my other favorite is our coffee Irish cream that we make around Saint Patty's Day. It is so good, and it's filled with a coffee buttercream with a Bailey's milk soak and it is so good.
Q: What sets you apart from your competitors?
A: What sets us apart from our competitors is that we are the only bakery in town that offers, that makes,these types of naked-style cakes. Um,we have a very specific technique in the way that we ice and layer the cakes. Um, and someone can look at the cake and just know that that is a Daughter's Baking cake by how you can see all the different layers. Um, we are also often told that it is the best cake people have ever had, so that definitely sets us apart as well just by our flavors.
Photo courtesy of Mallory Mason.
Q: Anything new or upcoming?
A: We currently have our cake cups at all the Piggly Wiggly in Birmingham in the frozen section. But we have been working on getting our larger cakes in the frozen section as well. So that's something that we want our customers to stay tuned about, and so that they can get larger cakes in the grocery store. And we also have just launched an adult baking class that we are pumped about and we'll be doing three this summer and hopefully more in the holiday season.
Q: How’d you get started in the industry?
A: I started baking when I was in college and I just really fell in love with it. At the time, I was a barista at Urban Standard and eventually took over the baking position there. And while I was there, I taught myself tons of different techniques and things to bake, and one of those was cakes. And I came across the Milkbar cookbook where I learned this technique of making cakes, and just really enjoyed the process and was just playing around with different flavors and recipes, um, with that technique. I eventually started an Instagram and started just showing my cakes and eventually started selling them. And the business just grew over time through word of mouth and my church community and the other people that I had met. And, eventually, I left Urban Standard after being there for four years and, um, just went to pursue this business of making cakes.
Q: What is your favorite part about work in the industry?
A: Um, my favorite part about work in this industry is just baking in and of itself. I've always loved the process of baking. It's been really therapeutic and fun just to be creative and come up with new flavors. I also love being able to build something in this community and build a culture and create joy for our customers, and it's just been really fun to watch this company grow.
