On her way out of town Tuesday following a pit stop in Chicago between California and Washington, D.C., Vice President Kamala Harris grabbed dessert from Brown Sugar Bakery and Confections in the Chatham neighborhood.
It was a pretty sweet call on her part.
Since 2004, Brown Sugar Bakery and founder Stephanie Hart have been delighting customers and garnering acclaim, including a 2019 nomination for a James Beard Foundation Award, one of the top honors in the industry.
According to the pool report, Harris’ staff preordered a slice of German chocolate cake for her to enjoy at the bakery. Harris said it’s her favorite and gets that for her birthday each year. Following the vice president’s visit, Brown Sugar Bakery sent Harris back to Marine Two with trays of caramel, lemon and strawberry cupcakes, according to ABC 7 Chicago.
The bakery — which also ships nationwide — has become best known for Hart’s caramel cake, a delicate, golden crumb layered by thick, creamy icing and sliced into vast slabs.
“The caramel that I make is so special that I literally had to go and watch an old lady in Arkansas make it, because I just couldn’t do it right,” Hart told the Tribune previously. “Our caramel is buttery and full, but extremely smooth.”
Celebrated for its thick, decadent cakes, pies, cobblers, cookies and banana puddings, the Southern-style bakery recently expanded to making confections like chocolate turtles. Hart bought the 85-year-old Cupid Candies factory in June with a $500,000 grant from the state of Illinois.
But the beloved bakery didn’t escape its share of pandemic hits. The Navy Pier location was temporarily shut down, along with the rest of the pier businesses, and Hart’s South Austin shop closed for good in October.
“Like many people, I had to retreat to the very core in order to survive,” she told the Tribune in February.
But through it all, the community where Hart proudly built her business showered her with support. The Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a nonprofit organization in Chicago that works to develop and support businesses, surprised Hart with a $10,000 small business grant on “Good Morning America” earlier this year, as well.
“Someone just called me today and said ‘We drove past your business last week, and it was cold outside. That cake must be good because people were standing in line!'” Hart said in February. “That type of support — where people don’t pass you up just because they gotta stand in line — I don’t know how you repay that.”
Louisa Chu and Adam Lukach contributed to this report.
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