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Courtesy Tessa Marie Images
The Bakery House, owned by Sandy Stauffer, serves up the best muffins and other baked goods in the Main Line region.
A perennial reader’s pick, this year for Best Muffins, The Bakery House has been sweetening the lives of its clients since 1989, when 26-year-old Sandy Stauffer, a math major at West Chester University, began wholesaling her cookies to Wawa and other stores. These days, Stauffer and her 35 employees produce an average of 2,500 pies over Thanksgiving alone. Her love for her loyal Main Line fans is the icing on the cake.
MLT: Why do you think your muffins won out this year?
SS: They’ve been bestsellers since the beginning. We started with blueberry, since we can get fresh ones year-round. Starbucks even approached me, but went elsewhere when I wouldn’t make our recipe more inexpensively.
MLT: Where did you learn the importance about baking from scratch?
SS: I grew up in Newtown Square, attended Marple Newtown High School and always baked from scratch with my mom. I bought the Bryn Mawr location in 2012 to support making the wholesale cookies. We did a little retail on the side, which Mom started. Her vanilla cake is still our bestseller. It’s made seven days a week all day long to keep up with demand. We love finding and trying new recipes. Anything new, we sample first. This April, we created a strawberry crisp. Apple-pecan-caramel pies are one of our creations, too. We make 900 at Christmas. Our business model is to do it the way we’ve always done it.
MLT: How does a math girl become a baker?
SS: Business and baking are all math. I can make what we call a counter cake, but I rely on our artists for the decorations.
Courtesy Tessa Marie Images
MLT: Any fun items for summer?
SK: Local blueberries are coming in now, so we’ll have blueberry crisp soon. We’re having good luck with gf Jules flour, so we offer a few gluten-sensitive items. But we have regular flour flying everywhere. We’re definitely not gluten-free.
Visit thebakeryhouse.net.
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