WARE — At the crack of dawn nearly every day, Jana Hayden, a baker in Ware, is answering texts and sending emails before she gets out of bed. She hasn’t even had her first cup of coffee — such is the growing demand for the cupcakes and baked goods she makes in the family kitchen.
“I have tried to take Mondays off, but I have not been able to do so since I said I was going to start taking Mondays off several months ago,” she told Reminder Publishing. “I usually get up, have my coffee, turn on my oven and get to mixing whatever I need for that day.”
Hayden, 42, owns and operates Cupcakes & Confections by Jana, a business she runs out of her home in Ware. She doesn’t publish her address because she said too many people would stop by unannounced and she’s not prepared to handle a crowd of walk-in customers.
The baker said the town won’t let her put a small sign outside her home, so she tells customers individually where she lives on Church Street when they come to pick up their orders.
“When I send out my street address, I always make sure there’s a disclaimer that it’s not a walk-in bakery. I have had people call me while driving up and down the road telling me they can’t find my bakery,” she said. “Most of my customers know where I live. Ware is a small town.”
Hayden said she has a license to run a residential bakery out of a home she shares with her partner of 13 years and her two adult children. There’s nothing fancy about most of her equipment. Although she does blend ingredients with three professional mixers, she uses a regular dishwasher, refrigerator and domestic oven to bake cupcakes, cakes, pies, cookies, chocolate dipped pretzels, truffles, bagels and other made to order confections.
The Ware woman opened her bakery in 2019 while she was still working as a line cook at a local restaurant. She had gone to culinary school and served a baking internship at the University of Massachusetts Amherst before quitting the restaurant business and opening her own shop.
“I had never baked before I went to culinary school. I didn’t do much in the kitchen. When my children were younger, I was going through a divorce from their father, and I was not in the best space. I happened to have the TV on and I saw a commercial for a culinary school, and everybody looked so happy making their food. And I’m like, ‘I want to make people happy with food,’” she said.
If Hayden wanted to bake and make friends, she has risen to the occasion. She has nearly three thousand of them on Facebook, a growing base of more than 100 regular patrons — and when it comes to new customers, there’s more than a baker’s dozen calling all the time.
“Sometimes, I can’t believe how busy I am. There are days that my phone is going off before I’m even out of bed until the time I go back to bed,” she said.
Hayden works 18 hours every Thursday and Friday, baking what her customers will pick up on Saturday and Sunday for their weekend events. Monday through Wednesday are more manageable 12-hour days.
While she is working, customers often arrive to pick up their orders in a vintage refrigerator she has outside her door. She trusts them to either leave cash or send payments electronically.
“If I’m busy or I’m not here, I put their orders in the cooler. People pull in, buy what they want, put money in the cash box, or send me a Venmo,” she said.
Hayden does nearly all of her marketing on Facebook, where she posts her offerings and takes orders. Forget about chocolate and vanilla — her customers are demanding something more exotic.
“My top two flavors would be peanut butter blast and cannoli. People love the cannoli cupcake,” said Hayden, who also revealed summer favorites include root beer float and blue raspberry.
The small-town baker said she creates her own recipes and makes everything from scratch, using locally produced ingredients when she can. She accommodates vegan and vegetarian customers by tailoring recipes for them.
While she had to follow strict orders and recipes when she was a cook, she can now be creative and independent. Both are baked into her DNA.
“I like to be in charge of what I’m doing and know that I have the control. I like things done a specific way and I want to do them that way,” she said.
Hayden has recently become a Sugar Angel for Icing Smiles, a national organization that uses local bakers across the country to “Create dream and fun cakes for critically ill children,” according to the group.
The Ware confectioner has made three cakes for Icing Smiles. They told Reminder Publishing how important bakers like Hayden are to helping children.
“Our program truly wouldn’t be possible without our Sugar Angels. Cupcakes and Confections is part of our network of 13,000 bakers across the country,” said Chelsea Boog, marketing and communications manager for the nonprofit.
Hayden comes alive running Cupcakes and Confections, and while it’s not what the family needs to survive financially, it is icing on the cake.
“I’m not in this to get rich. I’m happy to just be able to pay my bills,” she said. “I just feel like it’s my purpose to make people happy.”
