Dixon woman opens neighborhood bakery stand

DIXON — A Dixon woman is opening a self-serve bakery stand at the corner of East Chamberlain Street and Jefferson Avenue.

Christine Pomatto, a math and science teacher at Challand Middle School in Sterling, plans to officially open the stand, known as Christine’s Kitchen, at the end of July. She will have a cooler set up outside to store the individually packaged treats along with a chalkboard sign to display the menu and prices.

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Christine Pomatto ices up confetti cupcakes Friday, July 19, 2024 in her home kitchen. Armed with over a hundred cookbooks, Pomatto has fine tuned her recipes. (Alex T. Paschal)

In an interview with Shaw Local, Pomatto said she’s always had a love for baking.

When she was in college she started making cookies for her friends and realized that baking really wasn’t that hard, “if you just carefully follow the instructions,” she said.

Over the years, she practiced more and more, always offering to bring dessert for dinner parties and taking cooking classes while on vacation in places such as Paris and Thailand.

Bringing leftover desserts to share at work started to become a regular occurrence and people began asking her if she sold the treats. That’s when she thought, “maybe I could actually do this,” and decided to open Christine’s Kitchen, she said.

On Friday, July 19, Pomatto opened the stand for a “pop-up.” From 5-7 p.m. that day, she sold confetti cupcakes for $3 and fudge brownies for $4.

The confetti cupcakes were made using a basic vanilla cake mixture and buttermilk, which gives the cupcakes “a tangy flavor.” The brownies, one of her favorite desserts to make, were made with browned butter, which gives them a “toasty flavor,” she said.

On Friday, Pomatto accepted cash, Venmo and Zelle payments. Moving forward, she plans to mostly use the “honor system,” accepting cash and digital payments.

The bakery stand is licensed through the Lee County Health Department. It is a cottage food operation, meaning the food is produced in a home kitchen that is not inspected by the department. Because of that there are quite a few food safety rules she follows, such as not wearing any jewelry while baking, drying her hands with paper towels and handling all ready-to-eat foods while wearing disposable gloves.

With this license, all the items she sells have to be shelf stable. She is approved to sell cookies, brownies, caramels, muffins, scones, spice blends, cakes, cupcakes, candied nuts, chocolate candies and bread.

Of those she will mostly be selling cookies, brownies, muffins and cupcakes. The majority of her recipes are pulled from her collection of over 100 cookbooks.

Another one of her favorite things to make is ice cream, but she isn’t allowed to sell it “because the health department has a lot of restrictions on dairy products,” Pomatto said.

All of her treats will be individually packaged with custom labels that have been approved by the health department. In accordance with department standards, each label clearly identifies the packaged item and lists the ingredients used and possible allergens.

She also noted that she is not planning on offering any custom orders.

She plans to keep it open when she has time to bake, which will be mostly during the summer months but she hopes to keep the stand open all year round.

Currently, she is finishing up some remaining administrative tasks and hopes to open as soon as possible.

For information, visit Christine’s Kitchen on Facebook.

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