This tour begins in mountain-edged Asheville, in earshot of a street musician with a guitar who’s singing about faded flowers and lost love. At the narrow Pack Square location of The Sisters McMullen bakery, a.k.a. the Cupcake Corner, customers eye the glass case of pastries, overwhelmed by options. Opened in 2006, the corner shop often has a line at the counter, especially on festival weekends when tourists and locals stop in for a black-and-white cookie or croissant. Here, the whoopie pie is bigger than an overstuffed pulled-pork sandwich at a Carolina smokehouse, and the day’s lineup of cupcakes includes versions with gooey lemon or raspberry filling and a very dark chocolate cupcake baked with Guinness beer. (That moist, not-too-sweet cake didn’t last long.) A few minutes away at the other location on Merrimon Avenue, owner Andrea McMullen Sailer points beyond the vintage, chrome stools with crimson upholstery that line a wall of windows. “I live just over that mountain,” she says, and talks of Asheville’s luck to be a city thick with great neighborhood cafes.
The Sisters McMullen is closed.
Visit the rest of the delectable independent, local bakeries in Our State‘s North Carolina dessert tour:
Mountain Pie Company
Jimmie’s Sweets
Rosebriar
Hayes Barton Café & Dessertery
Bread of Heaven Bakery
Cheesecakes by Alex
Paul’s Pastry Shop
Seaside Cheesecake Dessert Shoppe
Savannah Red
Bailey Café
The Bakehouse
Sugar on Front Street
Cook, read, learn, and celebrate what North Carolina has to offer this month.
Our editor in chief reminisces on her first special-occasion restaurant experience in North Carolina.
In Pitt County, a luthier’s handcrafted guitars are sometimes discolored or full of knots; some are shaped liked snakes or shotguns. Each instrument’s story starts with the wood used to make it. And while the past may have left its scars, beauty can be found in the sights and sounds of art.
The Roanoke begins in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia and travels more than 400 miles before emptying into Albemarle Sound, linking countless lives along the way. Follow along as a native son traces the river’s path through northeastern North Carolina, sharing stories of the Roanoke he knows and loves.
