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FOREST LAKE TIMES THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2025 | 17
Little Sweeties Bakery offers handcrafted goodies
HANNAH DAVIS News Editor
What started with making a birthday cake for her one-year-old daughter has now turned into Little Sweeties Bakery, a cottage bakery in Forest Lake. Kalli Berken’ s has seen fast success selling her hand-crafted baked goods including cupcakes, cakes, cookies, and breads.
Berken worked in daycare, but after having her daughter, she wanted to stay home. After making her daughter’ s first birthday cake – a themed cake featuring her daughter’ s favorite animated fruit from her favorite a youtube channel – in January of this year, she thought it would be fun to start selling baked goods.
“ It calms me down,” she said.“ I don’ t feel like I’ m
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Kalli Berken started Little Sweeties Bakery in February after deciding to stay home with her daughter and leaving her full-time job as a daycare director.
working when I’ m baking.”
She had always loved baking growing up, finding inspiration from the hit TLC show“ Cake Boss” and trying different recipes. When she was in high school, her mom asked her to design and make her wedding cake.
After receiving great feedback about her daughter’ s cake, she was encouraged to start her own business. When Valentine’ s Day approached this year, she made some cake pops, and posted on Facebook that she’ d be selling them.
“ It was a hit,” she said. In the span of two months, she’ s garnered orders for cakes, cupcakes, and cookies for gender reveals, birthdays, confirmation celebrations, and other events. Cupcakes have become her favorite to decorate, and she loves coming up with some unique flavors, such as a maple bacon cupcake, a strawberry cookie crunch, and a Biscoff cookie cinnamon-and nutmeg-flavored cupcake.
She’ s starting with four main flavors of cookies: a soft and large chocolate chip cookie, double chocolate chip, a cheesecake-filled snickerdoodle, and – her favorite – an oatmeal cookie, a special family recipe. Her favorite creation so far has been a gender reveal cake that was bee-themed,
and has loved learning how to mold cake pops.
In addition to fulfilling orders, Berken has been preparing once-a-month“ porch pickup” events, pre-baking items to sell until they’ re sold out once a month.
“ It was a hit,” she said of the event.
Wanting to fill what she sees as a local bakery void in Forest Lake, Berken plans to continue running a cottage bakery until she can afford to open her
own bakery location in Forest Lake.
“ I want to be that bakery where people in my community can come and order homemade treats for whatever occasion they need,” Berken said.
You can order from Little Sweeties Bakery at bakesy. shop / b / little-sweeties-bakery, or find creations and information about the porch pickups on facebook or instagram by searching“ Little Sweeties Bakery.”
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Berken’ s“ porch pickup” days have been a hit, featuring baked items including her cupcakes, which include the flavors of strawberry cookie crunch, Biscoff cookie cinnamon, and maple bacon.
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