Baked with Love
Buttercups and Brown Sugar blends Family and Tradition…
For Carrie-Anne and Grace Crawford, the mother-daughter duo behind the cottage-based Buttercups and Brown Sugar Bakery in Lake Shastina, there’s a lot more that goes into baking than ingredients. “I’ve always liked baking for people because I enjoy putting the gift of love into whatever I’m making, and hoping they’ll taste that love when they eat it. A lot of things can look good, but don’t taste as great. But we want both. That’s what we’re shooting for,” explains Carrie-Anne.
Both women have baking in their genes. “I am third generation doing cakes, which makes Grace the fourth generation,” says Carrie-Anne. In fact, she remembers being pregnant with Grace, taking private cake-decorating lessons and imagining a future where she could stay home and bake. “But then life happens,” she says. “I had full-time work. I was raising kids. Baking for a living just always felt like a pipe dream.” Still, Carrie-Anne kept at it for 20 years, making cakes for every cousin and classroom and birthday. Eventually, she became known around Weed as “the cake lady.” Meanwhile, Grace grew up watching it all. “I always wanted to do it with her.”
Then, a little more than a year ago, life shifted, when the babysitting job Grace relied on ended suddenly. “I was kind of left with not knowing what I was going to do,” she says. That quiet pause, mixed with the desire to work alongside her mother, sparked something. “I started thinking, maybe this would be a good time to try it out.” Carrie-Anne remembers the moment: “Finally one day we decided, ‘Let’s do this.’”
They opened on Mother’s Day weekend, expecting maybe a trickle of orders. “We weren’t even sure if we’d get one customer,” Carrie-Anne admits. “Instead, we were slammed.” The business quickly took off, and Buttercups and Brown Sugar Bakery was born. At first, it was a little bit of a struggle to settle on a name. “We tossed out a lot of ideas. But we knew we liked floral names because they were pretty,” Grace says. “We thought of a bunch of different flowers, but landed on buttercups because it has the word butter in it, along with cups, as in measuring cups. Brown sugar just sounded cute with it. Plus, it seemed yummy.”
Now, in addition to perfecting some standard fare like cinnamon rolls and chocolate chip cookies, they also do themed weekly offerings and custom orders and cakes. “Our customers really want something other than a big-box cake. They want something that’s handcrafted and unique, which we love doing,” says Carrie-Anne. And, while they’re always experimenting with new ideas, they also have a number of heirloom recipes in their repertoire. “We have a red velvet cake recipe that comes from a great-grandmother who came from the South. And then I have my mother’s shortbread recipe, and my mother-in-law’s macadamia nut white chocolate chip recipe,” says Carrie-Anne. She’s also quick to note that they are always going on experimental deep dives to improve their recipes. “We want to make the best recipe we can find for everything that we do.”
The Crawford family ties to the community run deep. “My maiden name is Alvarado, which is fourth generation in Weed,” Carrie-Anne explains. Her great-uncle owned Phil’s Market—now the Alvarado Building downtown. “My cousin was the mayor. My dad taught at Weed Elementary for over 30 years.” Grace laughs about local fame-by-association: “Anytime I’d go out with my grandfather, everyone would be like ‘Mr. Alvarado! Mr. Alvarado!’ Everyone knew him.” The family is also well-known for its creativity. “My father is an artist. He’s done murals for a couple of different cities,” Carrie-Anne says. Grace’s specialty is calligraphy, even running an independent Etsy shop for her designs. “When it comes to any writing on our cakes or our baked goods, she’s the gal,” Carrie-Anne says. “I can bake, but I have horrible writing.”
Baking from home has proven to be its own adventure. “When you’re running a family business, it affects the whole family. There are many times when I have to tell my husband to stay out of the fridge or the kitchen, or to not use the stove. He’s also kind of a neat freak and there’s buttercream everywhere these days, so I have to say, he’s been a saint about this,” Carrie-Anne says with a laugh. She adds that one day, maybe a storefront will be in their future. “Dreaming on a big scale, a brick-and-mortar would be amazing,” Carrie-Anne says. “But for now, we are happy with where we are, doing what we love, and finding success based on the things that are most important to us, like faith, family and community.” Grace agrees, and sums it up simply. “I feel super blessed and grateful, because it’s a lot of fun working together. It’s definitely a labor of love, but we’ve been getting such positive feedback, it’s a really great feeling.”•
To learn more or place an order, visit buttercupsandbrownsugarbakery.square.site
