Geneva graduate turns COVID-era home-stay into baking business

BLACKBERRY TOWNSHIP – Alyssa Altman bent over a cooling rack of sugar cookies, all cut in the shape of babies’ onesies, and slowly piped out a pale pink layer of frosting.

She moved on to another rack of onesies, but this time she piped them in baby blue.

Once the frosting was set – about an hour – Altman added question marks, buttons and trim in white – tiny details right down to the crotch snaps and lace trim for the pink ones.

In all there would be 24 cookies for a gender reveal party.

“It is all custom work,” Altman, 20, said as she worked the frosting to cover the cookies. “I think some people don’t realize what custom work entails unless you’ve done it.”

Consider that it took about 90 minutes to mix, roll, cut and bake the cookies. They then had to cool completely before she applied the frosting. Add another hour for the frosting to set and another hour for the intricate details. That’s a lot of time to create the perfect cookies.

“A lot of people think it’s a classic cookie like a chocolate chip,” Altman said as she navigated the frosting. “It’s really all this detail work.”

Hobby to business

Welcome to Alyssa’s Home Bakery, set up at her mother’s house in Blackberry Township near Geneva.

The Northern Illinois University business and marketing major who also is on the dance team does custom baking 20 to 30 hours a week.

“I baked since I was really young,” said Altman, a junior in college. “My grandmother taught me a lot of her recipes. I was baking a lot for family just as a hobby.”

She was 17 and a junior at Geneva High School during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when students were learning remotely.

In March 2020, she was furloughed from her retail job.

Stuck at home, she started baking.

A lot.

“I was baking cinnamon rolls,” Altman said. “My mom said, ‘Why don’t you start selling them.’ I was like, ‘Aright.’ ”

Altman announced her baking business on Facebook in August 2020, starting out with cinnamon rolls and chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies.

“I got so many orders for hundreds of cinnamon rolls and cookies as well,” Altman said. “I baked for farmers markets in Batavia and Bloomingdale.”

Mom’s support

Her mother, Susan Altman-Hathaway, backed her daughter’s business, investing in the startup equipment, and, of course, letting her use the home kitchen.

“Alyssa is amazing,” Altman-Hathaway said. “Everything she does, it’s incredible. She’s just always been a very motivated girl.”

Altman-Hathaway, who recently had an unsuccessful run for U.S. representative in the 11th District in the Republican primary, registered her daughter’s business through her own baking supply company.

Altman-Hathaway’s support included insurance for home bakers. For that reason, Altman-Hathaway is considered a restaurant manager and both took a course in how to sanitize the work area because her daughter is considered a food handler, Altman-Hathaway said.

After high school graduation, Altman slowed down on other baking products because she started college. Aside from being a full-time student, she also is on the dance team. The team does performances at basketball, wrestling and some gymnastics meets.

“I started focusing on custom handmade cookies,” Altman said. “That’s my specialty, but I still do cinnamon rolls weekly and other pies or cookies.”

For some cookies, Altman relies on her Italian grandmother’s recipes, such as for Italian wedding cookies, linzers and snowballs. The cinnamon roll recipe is her mother’s.

Altman created her own original recipe for her sugar cookies.

“For sugar cookies, I think most recipes never taste good because they use low-quality vanilla or not enough,” Altman said. “I put extra vanilla in the cookies because this is my own recipe and I use pure vanilla bean paste. That is why you can see little vanilla bean flakes in the cookies.”

Customer praise

Geneva resident Andy White said he started ordering specialty cookies for his daughter’s birthdays and holidays from Altman when she was an NIU freshman.

“We had a Minnie and Mickey theme and also a One in a Melon theme for my daughter’s first birthday,” White said. “We did Easter, two birthdays and Valentine’s Day.”

For Valentine’s Day, Altman created a three-dimensional hollow heart-shaped chocolate that came with a little hammer. White said his kids used the hammer to break the heart and then got to eat the little candies inside.

“Alyssa is so easy to work with and captures exactly what we want and goes above and beyond to make them so special,” White said in an email.

Another customer, Joel Santerre of Batavia, wrote in an email that they ordered cookies from Altman during the pandemic while looking for treats for wedding guests.

“She was very local to us and understanding for our request to have every cookie bagged separately as to not have people touching others’ food during the pandemic,” Santerre said.

The Santerres became big fans and ordered cookies shaped and decorated like a cow to match their daughter’s cow costume.

“Alyssa is very nice,” Santerre said. “And her passion shows through the food she loves to bake.”

More information about Altman’s baking business is available on her Facebook page.