7 September 2023
Sarah Millfelt pulled a pink cloth off a tray of desserts, with a magician-like flourish.
She poured some coffee into a quirky handmade mug. Her three small dogs — Rancho Cucamonga, Trixie Pearl and Stanley Tucci — bustled around our chairs as we sat down in her backyard.
“Chill,” she said to them, smiling. “This is big for mommy!”
After 20 years at the Minneapolis arts organization Northern Clay Center — eight as its director — Millfelt launched Milly’s Kitchen Madness & Bakes three years ago. Customers can buy subscriptions for weekly dessert boxes, like community-supported agriculture programs that support local farmers. She’s a licensed cottage baker; everything is made in her home kitchen in Stillwater.
Millfelt herself is magnetic and irreverent, and her simple and extraordinary desserts speak for themselves. Her lemon scones, impossibly soft and airy, will ruin you for all other scones. Her chocolate chip cookies have a salty nuttiness that provides a backbone other cookies don’t have. I’d eat one of her cinnamon turnovers every morning if I could.
Lemon scones from Milly’s Kitchen Madness & Bakes, a cottage bakery in Stillwater, sit on a tray with other desserts in baker Sarah Millfelt’s backyard on July 11, 2023. Many of Millfelt’s recipes are vintage, and she’s inspired by simple ingredients like lemon and cinnamon. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
The contents of her homemade bake boxes change every week, depending simply on what’s inspiring her. She gravitates toward simple and comforting flavors, she said. Lemon, chocolate, cinnamon. Seasonal ingredients like cherries and rhubarb, when she can get them.
“I have absolute respect and reverence for people who like to do fun things with cardamom or sesame seeds and weird flavor combinations,” she said. “That’s amazing. I’m so glad that exists. But I would much rather get my hands on your grandma’s old coffee cake recipe and try to recreate that.”
Much of Millfelt’s passion for baking comes from memories of her own grandmother, Betty Jo, and other family members. Millfelt’s great-grandfather, a German immigrant, was a baker, she said, and her own father wouldn’t hesitate to whip up late-night batches of homemade vanilla pudding.
One of Milly’s Kitchen Madness’ most beloved traditions comes from Millfelt’s family, too: the winker. After just about every meal when she was growing up, she recalled, her parents and siblings would share a little taste of dessert — not necessarily a whole donut or cookie or bowl of ice cream per person, but just a small “winker” of something sweet. So now, every Milly’s bake box comes with a free extra item you can nosh on as you drive home.
But because she’s Sarah Millfelt, well, she goes a little above-and-beyond sometimes.
“I say a little winker or a little bite, but sometimes I send a big cookie with people,” she said, laughing. “It’s probably not really good for profit margins, but damn it, I love it.”
In some ways, that might as well be the theme of Milly’s. Yes, Millfelt is running a business here, and she’s serious about it. At the same time, though, Milly’s is a way for her to do only what she loves doing — getting creative in the kitchen and connecting with her neighbors.
About the seriousness thing, case in point: She had a professional logo and custom-stickered pastry boxes ready on day one. (“I was like, ‘What the hell do you think I’m doing here, just going to put it in a Ziploc?!’ Yeah I have a box!”) In her downstairs pantry space, there’s an entire cart devoted to sprinkles, alongside a refrigerator, two freezers, and sizable bins of flour and sugar exclusively for Milly’s.
And when she’s baking at home for Milly’s, no one else is allowed into the kitchen. This is for her own sanity as much as for food safety, she joked, half-seriously. If her husband, potter Mike Helke, wants a sweet snack, she’ll deliver it to his detached studio in the backyard.
“God, my family’s been so patient and wonderful as I’ve totally hijacked the house,” she said. She cracked a wry smile. “Although (Helke) would never say anything about that, because his bakes would be cut off!”
But Helke jokes she’s just as much of a bartender as a baker, in that customers readily share personal stories and details with her, like a close friend. They’ll text her in the middle of the night, she said. Maybe their parent entered hospice; maybe their first grandchild was just born.
“I get to have these — it’s so cheesy, but — totally magical encounters with people, and I love baking for them because of that,” Millfelt said. “Even if it’s a stranger. It’s like, ‘Oh my god, you picked me to do this for you.’ We could go anywhere to get our sweet treats, and people come to me.”
That’s why, at least at this point, she’s uninterested in expanding her production or opening her own retail store if it would take her out of the kitchen or interrupt her relationships with customers.
Maybe a trailer or food truck is in her future, but that — or even selling her baked goods in cafes and shops around Stillwater; as some store owners have requested — would mean obtaining a different kind of business license and renting space in a commercial kitchen.
And if that means hiring employees, it’s a no-go, at least for now.
“I don’t want to manage people and watch them make my stuff,” she said. “Not right now. I’m a control freak, probably. Put that in writing! I’m OK with that. I wouldn’t want to hand this off to somebody.”
It can feel weird, she said, to be 47 years old and experience the uncertainty of starting a new venture from the ground up. But after a full career in nonprofit management, leading a major arts organization and creating opportunities for other creative folks, she values the ability to center her own creativity.
“And the eating part, ob-vi-ous-ly!” she said, sing-song. “God, I love desserts so much.”
Milly’s Kitchen Madness & Bakes: Join online at millyskitchenmadness.com; box pickup is Fridays at Millfelt’s house in Stillwater