Metro Roundup: Hoover company teaches kids how to bake

Two years ago, Jessica Hamby was lamenting the lack of summer camps for children ages 3 and younger.

Because she liked to bake cookies and brownies with her then 3-year-old son, Luke, she half-heartedly suggested to a friend that they start their own summer baking camp. Her friend said she would pay for something like that.

“We were just kind of joking about it, but my imagination got busy, and I thought, ‘I’m going to go ahead with this,’” Hamby said.

She held a baking camp at her Riverchase home in July 2018, attended by about eight children. People immediately began asking when she would do it again.

Thus began Itty Bitty Bakers, a Hoover-based company that offers baking classes, camps and parties for kids ages 2-13.

Since that first camp in the summer of 2018, Hamby and the instructors who work with her have taught more than 275 children the joys of baking.

At first, she was just teaching preschoolers, but friends and others began asking why she didn’t offer classes for older children as well. So she adapted to meet the demand.

Or at least some of the demand. So many people wanted baking lessons for their children that Hamby has hired four other women to teach lessons as well.

Hamby has moved from Riverchase and now teaches from her home in the Barkley Square subdivision in the Inverness area, while Melissa Carden and Jeni Warram teach classes in their Riverchase homes.

Two other women, Elisabeth Welty and Kathryn White, teach classes in the kitchen at Oakmont Chapel Presbyterian Church on Patton Chapel Road, but White recently moved to the Broken Bow subdivision off Alabama 119 and will begin teaching classes in her home there in September, Hamby said.

The classes are monthly and broken up into age groups of 2-4, 5-7, 8-10 and 11-13.

SWEET AND SAVORY

Most of the classes cover how to make sweets, such as cupcakes, cookies, brownies, muffins, pies or scones. But the longer camps offer instruction for both sweet food and savory food, such as pizza, pizza puffs, star-shaped basil cheddar cheese crackers, cheddar biscuits or cheese crackers shaped like goldfish. This summer, one of the foods will be vegetable and feta muffins.

Hamby spent eight years as a clinical dietician for cancer patients, so she is well versed in healthy foods, but Itty Bitty Bakers doesn’t focus 100% on nutrition, she said. “Everybody likes the sweets.”

In September of last year, she offered a class to bake “healthy” white wheat, low-sugar caramel apple muffins, and it was the lowest attended class ever, she said.

All the foods are made from scratch; no muffin mixes or cake mixes are used, Hamby said.

“We need to teach kids how to handle raw ingredients,” she said. “It’s kind of a lost skill.”

Daniela Barber, who lives off Chapel Road, said her 11-year-old daughter, Sophia, loves going to the baking classes. She has been to at least 10 classes over the past year or so.

Not only does her daughter get to learn about baking; she also learns how to apply some of the math she is taught at school as she deals with fractions in recipes, Barber said. She also has been able to make new friends and learn how to work in a group setting, since children in the classes divide up the tasks.

Sophia isn’t really into sports, so this gives her something else to do. Sophia said her favorite thing to learn to bake so far has been a blue velvet cupcake with vanilla buttercream frosting.

“It was, like, really fun,” Sophia said. “I get to try new things and learn new things. … I didn’t know how to cook because I’ve never done it before.”

NOT JUST FOR GIRLS

Hamby said about 75 to 80 percent of the children in the classes are girls, but the boys enjoy it, too.

Some moms won’t let their boys come because they think cooking is for girls, but the boys who come have a good time, Hamby said. Some of the best chefs in Birmingham are men, she said.

“Baking can be masculine,” Hamby said. “When children learn how to cook and bake, they learn how to take care of themselves and others. It’s such a way to show love.”

Tara Vice, who lives in Riverchase, said her 10-year-old son, Graham, has been taking the classes for nearly two years.

He’s into sports such as baseball, flag football and basketball, and he rides motorcycles and go-carts, but he also likes the cooking classes.

“It’s really gotten him interested in baking and allows him to do some baking at home,” she said. “He likes to help out and now actually helps with the meals.”

Graham said he likes to try new things and probably most enjoyed making lemon zest cupcakes. “I think it’s just a great learning experience,” he said.

He likes baking so much that he now serves as a helper for the preschool classes.

Hamby said she has at least six youth helpers. She needs the extra supervision, particularly with the youngest ones.

Itty Bitty Bakers also currently has three college dietetic students from the University of Alabama and Samford University serving as interns. They help with the preschool classes, lesson planning, recipe development and testing, and social media marketing, Hamby said.

Itty Bitty Bakers limits its classes and camps to eight children per class but will take up to 20 for birthday parties. However, the clients provide the location for the birthday parties.

The instructors can’t have a ton of people coming to their homes all the time, Hamby said.

STRONG DEMAND

Demand for children’s baking classes has been strong, she said. She’s not aware of another baking school in the Birmingham area that focuses solely on children, except one in Homewood that serves preschools.

Interest has been so strong that some people have become borderline feisty when told her classes were full, Hamby said. She hasn’t done much advertising; most of her clients have come through referrals.

Her primary reason for starting Itty Bitty Bakers was to meet a need, but she is interested in expanding and making it a more profitable business.

When she started it, she promised her husband she would quit if she didn’t turn a profit by the third year, she said. In 2019, after 1½ years, she had a surplus of about $400 after paying all the bills, so she is a little ahead of schedule, she said.

Still, $400 is not much at all for what is a full-time job, Hamby said. “It’s way more than a 40-hour workweek,” she said. “That is not supplemental income for my family.”

Hamby said the vast majority of her customers are from Hoover, though she has some regulars from Moody and Vestavia Hills. She has had requests to offer classes in Auburn and Montgomery and may look at distant locations like that if she can find good instructors there, she said.

It’s hard to find instructors who are both good at baking and good working with kids, she said. “I’m just trying to survive here in Hoover right now and find good, quality teachers.”

There also aren’t a lot of commercial kitchens available. She is talking to some Mother’s Day Out programs about offering an “enhanced” service for them and plans to start doing that at Valleydale Church this fall with a 45-minute class tagged onto the end of the day, similar to soccer, ballet and gymnastics programs offered there, she said. She also is considering working with libraries more.

She charges between $25 and $45 per child, depending on age, for classes and $120 to $140 per child for camps, but her best income comes from birthday parties, which cost $240 for up to eight children in a decorating class and $320 for up to eight children in a class that involves oven baking. She’ll allow up to 20 in birthday parties, but each child over eight costs another $20.

Most spring classes and camps were canceled due to the COVID-19 outbreak, but Hamby was hoping to start back in June. For details about upcoming classes, visit ittybittybakers.com.