Pookie Crack Cakes in Bronzeville gives customers what they want
CHICAGO (CBS) -- It's Foodie Friday. This week, a new bakery in Bronzeville has the whole neighborhood lining up for small bundt cakes that are big enough to share.
The stream's Jamaica ponder takes you there to see what's so addictive about Pookie Crack Cakes.
The line outside of Pookie Crack Cakes is already halfway down the block.
"They start lining up in the mornings at about 9:45 a.m.," said Dedra Simmons, founder and owner of Pookie Crack Cakes.
But the shop doesn't open until 11 a.m.
"We thought it would be a good idea to get here an hour early, and here we are," said Steve Taylor.
"I came from all the way from Wisconsin," said Melissa Strickland.
"They wait. I go out there, I greet them before they come in."
Because to get what you want, you've got to get there early.
"I've sold out of cakes every single day that I've opened," Dedra said.
Her husband Doug runs the front of the house - greeting everyone with a warm…
"What can I get ya?"
The shop may be new but Dedra's handmade Pookie Crack Cakes have been around for about a decade.
"I started baking in 2014. I was baking out of my apartment," Dedra said.
Simmons first posted pictures of the cakes to Facebook.
"And people started inboxing me like, "Hey, how can I purchase this cake from you?"
It quickly went from her baking weekly to…
"Me doing it like monthly, and then me doing it like forever because the people would not allow me to stop."
For the first four years, she was only making one type of cake.
"My great-grandmother, she had this butter pecan praline glaze that she used to put on top of her bread puddings when I was a kid," Dedra said.
She took that and put it on top of a buttery bundt cake.
"And it all started from there."
Selling hundreds from her home, and always selling out.
"I had turned my home into literally a bakery."
And they kept burning out their ovens.
"We were like four ovens in. My husband was like, you know, we need to really find a commercial space."
Originally, she didn't want to open a bakery. She said she fought the idea "tooth and nail" and her hesitation to expand came from a place of fear.
'It wasn't it wasn't that I was scared that I wasn't going to be successful. It was just scared of just putting myself out there," she said.
But her family, and her customers, insisted she open shop.
"Without them, I couldn't have done it. I couldn't have done this. And it's emotional because this is a surreal moment for me," Dedra said with tears in her eyes.
Now, not even two months into being open, Pookie Crack Cakes is selling over 2,000 cakes a week.
"It comes with not about the quantity, but the quality of what I put into the product, and I just put a lot of love. The love is what I put into the pastries. The crack is the love that I put into the cakes. That's the crack."
And as for Pookie...
"Everybody is overindulging in something, right? That's Pookie. That's what makes you a Pookie, Dedra said"
