Sweet and Sinful Bakery Moves to New Digs

Sweet 'N Sinful bakery has moved off the main drag in Avondale Estates to a new location with a purpose.

Besides the usual offerings of cakes, cupcakes, petit fours, pies, tarts, cookies, and brownies, owner Layne Lee of Sweet 'N Sinful has room for breakfast offerings such as scones, breads and coffee at the new location at 4-B Pine St.

Lee also believes that customers will get into the food mindset because she's now located right next door to the Pine Street Market, which sells fresh sausages, cheeses and freshly smoked bacon, among its offerings.

"Now customers can go see the butcher and the baker, all we need is a candlestick maker," Lee jokes. "We're a one stop shop. People can go get bacon and a dessert."

The opening for Sweet 'N Sinful is set for April 1 at 11 a.m., with a ribbon cutting and weekend long festivities such as giveaways and discounts.

Apparently, customers can't wait. Lee didn't even have the store sign up when people were knocking on the door asking for cakes, cupcakes and other sweet confections. She put a blackboard sign outside letting customers know of the future opening date. Even the phone is abuzz.

"The phone hasn't stopped ringing," Lee said. 

Last Friday, Lee and her team were busy sculpting wedding and birthday cakes, frosting baptism cookies, and baking dark chocolate brownies.

Using all her own recipes, Lee opened her first Sweet 'N Sinful location in Stone Mountain in 2004. The bakery was by appointment only. However the Avondale Estates resident soon realized most of her customers were driving from her own neighborhood. In 2006, she moved to Avondale.

"When I saw space open in Tudor Village, I grabbed it," Lee said. 

But it didn't take long to outgrow space there either.

"When it rained, or when it was hot or cold, [customers] with kids wouldn't park and walk around," Lee said, adding that even inside it was hard to keep the bakery cool because of the small, residential heating and air conditioning units.

With the new space, there's room to grow sales by 50 percent, Lee said.

She's also expanding by selling four types of brownies to Whole Foods Market. Initially the brownies - regular and gluten-free dark and milk chocolate - will be sold in Whole Foods in Buckhead. If all goes well, she could be selling them nationally within the next year.

Lee is also helping another local baker by copacking Judy Cakes for Whole Foods.

"I am really excited about it," Lee said. 

Lee studied pastry at the Art Institute of Atlanta, the Illinois Institute of Art and the French Pastry School. But she wasn't always interested in dessert. Lee suffered from an eating disorder and her therapy was learning how to cook.

"It's not the path most people take," Lee said. "My parents were shocked. But here we are, eating disorder cured."

Another surprise about Lee is that she was a Next Food Network Star finalist but had to back out because she became pregnant. Lee and her husband Gene Lee, an Avondale Estates commissioner, are proud parents of a nine-month-old daughter named Ellis.

Sweet 'N Sinful's customers have also brought her notariety. She counts Kathy Hogan Trocheck, a.k.a. , another Avondale resident, and Black Entertainment Television among her customers.