‘A dash of love and pinch of passion’

Story and photos by Donna Campbell

Becky Walden can bake anything — from a simple red velvet or a chocolate raspberry cake to an elaborate marbled, tiered wedding reception centerpiece with a homemade buttercream icing and a chocolate ganache filling. But her most popular creation is a gone cake. “I tell people, ‘I can do pretty cakes, but to me a ‘gone’ cake means it was good,” she said. “The plate is empty and there’s just crumbs on it. That meant the cake was not just pretty, but it was good, too. And to me that’s the most important part. I tell people that I promise pretty, but I guarantee taste.”

Walden, 36, is The Cake Lady both in business and pleasure. Whether she’s filling orders for customers or whipping up something sweet to take to church fellowship, Walden always adds her secret ingredients — passion and love.

“I like to tell people that my favorite ingredients to cook with is a dash of love and pinch of passion,” she said. “You can taste whether or not you enjoy what you’re doing. I think when you are able to share your God-given gift, it shows.”

Walden lives in Loyd Star with her husband Sam and their 14-year-old son, Drake. She works from home so she can homeschool Drake but also because she learned from her mother that she enjoys the freedom baking in her own kitchen gives her.

Walden started cooking long before she could peek in her pans without help.

“I’ve been cooking since before I could reach the stove,” she said. “I can remember being a little girl and getting in trouble for pulling a chair up to the stove to cook breakfast for my parents while they were still asleep.”

She grew up in the kitchen. It was her comfort zone, her happy place and her classroom. Her teachers were her grandmother and mother.

She remembers at age 11 her grandmother measured her hand while they were fixing Thanksgiving dinner.

“She took a measuring cup and put a fourth cup of flour into my hand and she told me that my hand would always be a fourth cup, so I didn’t need measuring cups,” she said. “And it’s still to this day a fourth cup. I can grab a fourth a cup with my hand and know it’s about right.”

She also learned baking as a business from her mother, Janie Hart, who owned The Cake Lady in downtown Brookhaven years ago. Hart also co-owned Mrs. Bea’s in Brookhaven by First Baptist Church. She eventually sold both of the businesses, but Walden never stopped cooking and baking. And neither did her mother, who now helps out as her assistant.

When Walden was about 18, she started working for a catering company in Bogue Chitto, Annie P. Goodies, which was owned by Annie Ticklesimer. Walden was Ticklesimer’s catering manager for about six years.

“Between her and my mother, they really molded my cooking career,” she said.

Baking is the majority of her business, but for pleasure she cooks for elderly members of her church, Friendship Baptist, and a few others.

On the second Monday each month, Walden and others ladies at Friendship prepare a feast for the “Golden Oldies” and serve them after their devotion and entertainment.

“Our elders have given up and sacrificed so much. Sometimes the only thing they have to look forward to is their next meal so I feel like it should be fabulous,” she said.

Besides her big heart, Walden is known for her sweets — cakes, cookies and candy. She’s popular with area brides for her wedding cakes and she kept her mom’s business name, The Cake Lady.

For her business — and most everything else — Walden uses recipes from a treasured family cookbook. “We’ve got a cookbook from the early 1930s that was my greatgrandmother’s, which she gave to my grandmother, who my mother got it from. She has it now,” she said.

They have the original that’s falling apart from years of use, so Walden found a more recent edition on eBay that’s in better shape. They use that one now, hoping to preserve the hand-medown for future generations.

Some recipes she uses didn’t come from the book.

“We’ve got one family recipe for the old fashioned tea cake that’s been in our family for right at six generations,” she said.

Her pecan pie came from her third great-aunt, a German woman her uncle met overseas and married after World War II. Old recipes are her favorite. “It’s the simplicity of them. It’s the love you put into them. It’s simple ingredients. They’re five ingredients or less. And you can’t beat the flavor,” she said.

Most of the old recipes were written in a time before instant everything.

“One of my favorite compliments I get is, ‘Oh my gosh, this tastes just like my grandmother’s,’” she said.

Walden’s year is divided into baking seasons. March, April and May is birthday cake season. August, September and October are also busy birthday months. Valentine’s Day is a popular time for red velvet sweets and dipped strawberries. She’s busy with weddings June through October. Candy season starts in November.

When she’s baking for customers, she’ll make a bit extra so she’s got a steady supply for her family. Her nephews always ask her for ugly cookies that don’t make it into the customers’ orders. “A lot of times my family gets the scraps,” she said, laughing.

The holidays allow her to be extra creative with candy. She enjoys experimenting with flavors, especially with fudge. Popular holiday fudge flavors include banana cream, pumpkin, peppermint and eggnog. She’s got about 16 in her repertoire.

She uses two fudge recipes. Her go-to is a marshmallow fudge, but she also makes a fudge that her stepfather Earl Hart learned from his mother and passed on to Walden. It’s cocoa powder and peanut butter.

“You have to cook it. From start to finish you cook it and then you stir it. You’ve really got to know what you’re doing or this fudge will not set up. It’s an oldtimey fudge,” she said.

Christmas season sees Walden producing rack after rack of coconut pies, cookies and cakes. Before the new year, she’ll roll out hundreds of chocolate peanut butter buckeyes — Drake likes them with white chocolate and calls them doe eyes — and slice up dozens of fruit cake bars.

However, her favorite holiday treat is biscuits at her mom’s on Christmas morning. Like everything measured and mixed in Walden’s life, the recipe is a family keepsake. It’s a sausage and cheese biscuit — made from her mother’s recipe — that’s been a staple on Christmas mornings for over three decades.

Walden, her sister and their families gather at the Harts’ house at 5 a.m. on Christmas morning for the cheesy and meaty biscuits and homemade hot chocolate. Then they’ll open gifts left from a jolly ol’ elf who stopped by during the night. Believing in Santa is also a family tradition.

“Santa Claus still leaves us presents under her tree,” she said.