Put ramekins on a baking sheet. Bake for 25-35 minutes, until puffed and golden. Remove from oven, and let stand for 5 minutes. With a flexible spatula, remove strata to

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A Year-Round Guide to Franklin and Nantahala

We’ve all done it: surreptitiously swiped our pinkies through the chocolate or cream cheese or buttercream seam where the icing meets the cake plate. That need for a dollop of

Food

Rosemary and Goat Cheese Strata

We’ve all done it: surreptitiously swiped our pinkies through the chocolate or cream cheese or buttercream seam where the icing meets the cake plate. That need for a dollop of

Bakery

Stack ’Em Up: A Southern Signature Multilayer Cake

Eight, 10, 12 layers — or more! Sky-high cakes are a point of pride in the South. How’s it done? We’d never ask a baker to divulge her secrets. We just dig in.

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We’ve all done it: surreptitiously swiped our pinkies through the chocolate or cream cheese or buttercream seam where the icing meets the cake plate. That need for a dollop of sugary goo with every forkful of cake surely led to the Southern-style, multilayer baked beauties whose zebra-like icing stripes elicit gasps when they’re cut into. But for those of us who have neither the time, the talent, the tools, nor the steady hands required to use them, thank heavens for our local cake ladies, who build these sweet stacks with love and precision.

In Dunn, everyone knows they can count on Sherry Baysa, whose 10-layer yellow cake with chocolate frosting is available at Sherry’s Bakery every day beginning at 9 a.m. One dig through layer upon layer of dark brown and sunshine yellow will convince you why, until 1967 — when Baysa’s parents renamed it after their young daughter — the bakery was called Dunn Rite. 

Sherry’s Bakery
122 North Wilson Avenue
Dunn, NC 28334
(910) 892-3310
sherrysbakery.wixsite.com

This story was published on Jul 29, 2019

Susan Stafford Kelly

Susan Stafford Kelly was raised in Rutherfordton. She attended UNC-Chapel Hill and earned a Master of Fine Arts from Warren Wilson College. She is the author of Carolina Classics, a collection of essays that have appeared in Our State, and five novels: How Close We Come, Even Now, The Last of Something, Now You Know, and By Accident. Susan has three grown children and lives in Greensboro with her husband, Sterling.