Sugarbelle founder Kasie Coleman can remember every detail of her family’s treasured recipes, including the signature cakes and desserts she sells today through Tony’s Seafood and Matherne’s Supermarket on Bluebonnet Boulevard.
Much of Coleman’s youth was spent cooking at her grandmother’s side. Mary Davenport, a cafeteria worker at Kenilworth Middle School, prepared homey Southern classics by gut and feel. She was an especially talented baker, and she showed Coleman and her cousins how to whip up flawless church supper-style layer cakes from scratch. There were no shortcuts, Coleman recalls.
Turtle brownies from Sugarbelle
“She made everything the old-fashioned way,” Coleman says. “I baked with her every day growing up, and I never forgot what she taught me. Baking became like riding a bike, or making a ham and cheese. Second nature.”
And while it gave her pleasure to continue her grandmother’s traditions over the years, baking would later become a sanctuary. In 2010, Coleman was diagnosed with a rare form of peritoneal mesothelioma, a type of cancer that strikes only about 150-200 Americans a year. It was tough news for the married mother of two small children, then ages 1 and 5.
Coleman’s cancer treatment required frequent out-of-town trips to a clinic, making it difficult to sustain her work as a pharmaceutical sales rep. Between chemotherapy and doctor’s visits, she had long stretches of downtime, during which she turned to baking.
“For me, it was therapy,” she says. “I reverted back to my grandmother, who was like a second mom to me. I would bake four or five cakes a day.”
Coleman’s family gobbled up 7-Up pound cake, homemade pralines and tender red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. Friends loved receiving the sweets, too, and joked that Coleman was causing them to gain weight. It occurred to Coleman that she might be on to a business idea. If she could turn baking into a commercial venture, she could contribute to the family income while maintaining a flexible schedule.
“During chemo sessions, I would sit there and write recipes like a fiend,” she recalls. “The passion for baking had come back. I was determined to open a bakery where the items were exclusively made from scratch.”
Sugarbelle was born. Since 2015, Coleman has operated out of the LSU AgCenter Food Incubator, where she bakes Monday through Wednesday, preparing orders for Tony’s, Matherne’s and the LSU Dairy Store. Using pure ingredients and still sifting her dry ingredients by hand, she makes individual cake squares in flavors like “Wedding Belle,” red velvet, German chocolate, carrot, lemon, fresh strawberry and the “Southern Sophia,” which resembles Italian cream. She’s also known for her authentic five-ingredient tea cakes, pralines, praline brownies and cream cheese-filled “ooey gooeys.”
“When I first started, I decided I was going to go old-school,” Coleman says of her traditional desserts. “It’s more work and is labor-intensive, but I believe that’s what sets me apart.”
She originally opened Sugarbelle as a storefront in Delmont Village in 2013, where she built a following of loyal customers. The store featured six rotating cupcake flavors each week, fresh cakes and other desserts. Coleman always had a pound cake on the counter for customers who wanted a fresh slice.
“The store just blew up beyond my expectations,” she says. “We developed a great rapport with customers, but we were working 70 hours a week.”
Now that she’s based out of the LSU Incubator—and the cancer is at bay, though not in remission—Coleman is trying to determine her next move. She wants to expand but says she can’t imagine taking shortcuts.
“It’s definitely a huge challenge, scaling up to meet demand, but also staying true to baking from scratch,” Coleman says. “I’m baking like it’s 1940. It’s something no one really does anymore.” facebook.com/MySugarbelle
This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.
