AMHERST — The Mill District has a sweet new addition to its storefronts.

Combining a love of food, fun, kindness and ethical desserts, Alysia Bryant opened the doors to her cake shop, Carefree Cakery, on Aug. 1 at the 71 Cowls Road mixed-use development.

A few days in and the shop location has already cooked up success. By day three, more than an hour before closing time, the cakery sold out of all its goods.

“We sold out of everything. Everything. This has been just a whirlwind of joy, love and stress,” said Bryant with a chuckle.

Already, the business has sent out a strawberry lemonade flavored wedding cake and a number of orders are continuing to come in.

Bryant first started baking in high school when she couldn’t find a job. Initially, she would bake boxed-mix brownies and modify the recipes, and sell them to friends. Over time, her teachers would also purchase some of her baked goods.

By the time she hit college, she was determined to enter a career that would allow her to help people and to make enough money to have a stable and safe life. At the time, she dreamt of becoming a doctor. While taking biology courses at Framingham State University, she realized that she lacked the passion she needed to pursue such a lofty goal.

“Once we got into the nuts and bolts of it, I realized that being a doctor just wasn’t for me,” she said.

In considering a new path for her future, she decided to apply for a job working in the bakery of a nearby Stop & Shop. She came to the conclusion that if she got that job, she would take it as a sign from the universe to make a career out of baking.

That sign came when she was hired for the job, so she changed her major and then went on to graduate from Framingham State with a bachelor’s degree in business management with a concentration in entrepreneurship.

As that dream started to percolate, Bryant reflected on her experiences in high school and contemplated how she could merge her love of baking with her drive to help others, which led to her investment in fair trade baking.

Batter up

While researching ingredients and learning about where items are sourced, Bryant took a deep dive into the world of fair trade farming. One ingredient she uses in almost every recipe is vanilla. Through her research, she discovered that the vanilla trade in particular is “very detrimental” to the farmers who grow it.

“Vanilla takes a long time to grow. It’s frequently grown in Madagascar, which is considered the gold standard by many. However, vanilla is not native to Madagascar, so it has no natural pollinators whatsoever there,” she said. “What this means is, these farmers are going out by hand and manually pressing the parrots of the flowers together to pollinate them by hand.”

Additionally, once the crop is harvested, it ferments quickly.

“This means farmers have a narrow window in which to sell to the middle men who are then processing it and getting it to us,” she said. “It’s really a breeding ground for taking advantage of people because if you have a narrow window in which your livelihood can be sold, then you’re going to sell it to whatever price is given to you because it’s that or literally nothing. And that really burns me up.”

Bryant’s solution to that problem is partnering with brands like Singing Dog Vanilla, a Eugene, Oregon-based company that ensures fair prices for their vanilla beans by purchasing the crop all at once, minus a middle seller, in an effort to provide farmers with a steady income throughout the year. The company also shares a percentage of their profits with the farmers. Bryant said that purchasing products like Singing Dog Vanilla means that she is helping to protect the livelihood of farmers.

The overall mission of the cakery is to do no harm and lift others up. Bryant says that her business’ values start before the ingredients reach the kitchen.

“As a fair trade bakery, we value people above all else,” she said. “We carefully select vendors that pay fairly for every bit of our raw materials. And while it is costly, we believe that the happiness you feel when eating a treat should be shared with those who made it possible.”

Cake offerings

Together with her staff, which currently only includes Veronica Lawrence, Bryant’s shop sells mini and full-size cupcakes, coolies, brownies, cake pops, cheesecake, and of course, cakes.

Like Bryant, Lawrence is self-taught. Her love of cake-making was fueled by an immense dislike of watching Buddy Valastro via his reality TV show, “Cake Boss.”

“I just hate him. I kept thinking, ‘I can do better than that’ over and over, so I started watching a whole bunch of YouTube channels and kept at it,” she said.

Bryant and Lawrence strive to make each recipe really “clean” without excess ingredients. All of the shop’s strawberry and raspberry buttercreams, for example, are made with real fruit and are sweet, but not “too sweet.” This method helps to keep the dessert flavors more pure and is especially beneficial for those who have allergies.

One staple of the shop is their carrot cake, which has a hint of pineapple sweetness and is topped with a cream cheese buttercream.

With past experience in other bakeries, both Bryant and Lawrence have found that customers also often inquire about gluten-free and vegan options and are often met with little to no selections. Much like the attention paid to fair trade ingredients, Carefree Cakery sells gluten-free and vegan goods by designating a separate prep and storage space as well as an oven for those options.

“Everything that we’re doing is in an effort to take care of our community, because that’s the backbone of our business,” said Bryant.

Carefree Cakery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The shop will hold a grand-opening celebration on Saturday.

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