By Audrey Stanton-Smith ❖ Photos by Jenny Harnish
At Kenzie ’ s Kakes and Coffee , love comes in many forms . Sometimes it ’ s a box of chocolate-covered strawberries . Sometimes it ’ s cupcakes , or cookies , or brownies , or a small , round cake . In February , it may be a frothy pink “ Cupid ’ s Choice ” cold foam coffee drink topped with edible gold glitter . But all the time , love at Kenzie ’ s Kakes takes the form of a mother ’ s support for a daughter . “ I might be CEO , but she ’ s CE everything else ,” says 21-year-old Kenzie Brogan , who opened her very own standalone bakery business at 496 Ritter Drive in Beaver on Nov . 20 , with a little help from her mother , Jeanie Bowman . “ It ’ s emotional ,” says Bowman . “ She ’ s just such a hard worker . ... We just had no idea it would turn into all this . She ’ s been making cakes since she was 11 .” “ All this ” is a completely remodeled walk-in bakery and coffee shop , and it ’ s a long way from Mom ’ s kitchen . Kenzie was being homeschooled through REACH ( Reaching , Encouraging , and Adorning Christian Homeschoolers ) when “ Cake Boss ” caught her attention on television . So , when one of the parents in the homeschool co-op offered a decorating class , Kenzie jumped at the chance to learn . She still remembers her first cake . “ It was an 8-inch square ,” she recalls . “ White icing . Very messily iced . So not clean at all . I think it had purple and turquoise piping and some yellow roses , and it was a mess . But I loved it .” Her mother remembers , too . “ She came home from that co-op class and said , ‘ Mom , I love this !’ ” As a matter of fact , Bowman says , her 11-year-old daughter loved it so much that she decided then and there what she wanted to do when she grew up — work in the only bakery she ’ d ever visited , the one at nearby Wal-Mart . “ We had such a fun time in that class , and then it just clicked ,” Brogan says . The baking — and soon the decorating — seemed to come naturally to Kenzie . It wasn ’ t long before she was making cakes for baby showers , birthdays , anniversaries and even weddings , in her mother ’ s kitchen . “ At home , I wasn ’ t really a boss ,” Brogan says . “ I just kind of made things . Mom started posting on Facebook . People started asking . By the time I was 14 or 15 , I was working full-time from Mom ’ s kitchen .” With Mom lending an extra hand in the kitchen and promoting Kenzie ’ s Kakes on social media , business picked up quickly . What began as a one-or-two-cakes-aweekend hobby turned into a dozens-of-cakes-each-week business . Fortunately , Kenzie ’ s homeschool program allowed her to work at her own pace and on her own time , so the teenager not only arranged her schedule around her cake business , she completed high school early .
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