Baked goods without the ‘garbage’ are the focus of this new Centre County business

When Alyssa Burns had her first child eight years ago, she began focusing more on making foods from scratch, using real ingredients that better suited her family’s priorities. She recently decided to offer the same all-natural baked goods that her family loves to the Centre County community, opening Blackberry Cottage Bake Shoppe for its first orders in August.

“When I was in college, I started to really pay attention to what I was eating. The more that you open your eyes to [the] different ingredients that are in your food, you realize that it’s not all quality ingredients or even actual food,” Burns said.

Inspired by her prior work at K2 Roots, the cold-pressed raw juice shop in downtown State College, Burns knew there was a clientele for healthier foods in Centre County, particularly recently.

“Artificial food dyes, preservatives and enriched products are getting a lot more hype these days. I’m seeing them in the news more. I think that people are becoming more aware of some of the garbage that might be hiding in some of their food,” she said.

Taking weekly orders for pick-up or delivery via Hotplate, Blackberry Cottage Bake Shoppe offers a variety of rotating items every week, including already proven crowd favorites like muffins, loaves of bread and cookies, as well as timely items like cornbread for soup season or treats that take advantage of local, fresh produce, like apples.

Burns doesn’t use enriched flour in any of her baked goods, noting that it contains ingredients like folic acid, which not everyone can easily process. Instead, she uses organic einkorn flour.

“It is, in theory, the most ancient of all wheats and it is supposed to have not been hybridized at all,” she said. “It’s lower in gluten, higher in protein and lower on the glycemic index.”

Additionally, rather than refined sugars, she uses sweeteners like coconut sugar, date sugar, or local honey or maple syrup, alongside local eggs and grass-fed butter, visiting area farmers markets and farms to source ingredients.

“[They’re] just really quality, well-thought-out ingredients that you would want your family consuming,” Burns said.

Since none of the ingredients Burns uses are refined or bleached, her baked goods have more of a golden, earthy tone than the bright white hue consumers might be accustomed to, and the einkorn flour has more of a nutty flavor. The ancient flour also retains liquid well, leading to a particularly moist crumb, which customers will notice in Burns’ muffin recipe.

“For this season, the pumpkin chocolate chip muffins have been amazing. They’re made with Hu chocolate, which is [made with] coconut sugar. There are very minimal ingredients, and it’s that yummy seasonal pumpkin [flavor], but without being pumpkin spice,” she said.

The Blackberry Cottage Bake Shoppe preorder portal opens each Monday through Wednesday morning, with pickup and delivery taking place on Saturday. Delivery comes with a minimal fee but is available throughout most of the county. To keep items as fresh as possible, Burns shops for all of her ingredients on Friday, and then bakes all items on Friday evening or Saturday morning, right before deliveries.

Since launching the business three months ago, Burns said connecting with the broader community and seeing the demand for healthful, unprocessed baked goods has been “great.”

“We’re really fortunate to have a rich desire for things like this [in Centre County],” she said. “People in the area love the farmers markets. They love the fresh local ingredients and foods. It’s really nice to have that supportive community and make new connections.”

Looking to the immediate future, Burns isn’t anticipating growing the business too rapidly, as she’s currently expecting her fourth child. However, further down the road, she’d love to expand beyond pre-orders and begin appearing at farmer’s markets.

Learn more about Blackberry Cottage Bake Shoppe at instagram.com/blackberrycottage_bakeshoppe/.

Holly Riddle is a freelance food, travel and lifestyle writer. She can be reached at holly.ridd@gmail.com.