LISBON — Tara Kieger has enough oven space to bake 24 sheets of cookies or 96 pies at once. She’s got busy Route 196 outside her door. She’s known since she was a little girl in the kitchen with her grandmother that she’s wanted to be a pastry chef.

Now, she’s three months into going big with her one-woman bakery, Sweet Cakes Bake Shop.

In October, after signing the lease for the former Benoit’s Bakery space, “I came in, turned the lights on and said, oh my god, what have I done? You kind of get that big gulp, OK, this is my home away from home now,” said Kieger, 35. “I think, so far, we’re rocking and rolling.”

Kieger, a Durham native, had worked out of a commercial kitchen in her home since 2007, keeping her custom wedding and birthday cake business something she did on the side. A year ago, unhappy at a new sales position, her husband, Tim, asked what would be her dream job. It was this.

“I want to have my own space, I want to be my own boss, to have my image and my own thing to share with other people,” she said. “He’s like OK, how are you going to do that?”

So a year ago, they started the hunt for space.

The couple met at Johnson & Wales University.

“He went for culinary and I did baking, so our little thing when we were dating was he was the entree and I was the dessert,” Kieger said.

After college, she worked in grocery store bakeries for nine years and then as a traveling trainer, going to in-store bakeries from Fort Kent to Hartford, Connecticut teaching people to bake bread and decorate cakes for two years.

“I like to teach people what I love, because it’s really cool and exciting to me to watch them get excited about it, too,” she said. “When you walk into a building with people who have been there for 20 years doing it one way, and you walk in being the guy who is trying to tell them to stop that and do it this way, it doesn’t always go over well, but you have navigate (it).”

But with a new job and young daughter at home, she was ready for a change. The Benoit’s space was a good fit. She officially opened two weeks before Thanksgiving.

Sixty orders poured in for rolls and pies, followed by a strong December with rolls, party platters and meat pies. Kieger uses Benoit’s classic recipe for pork, chicken and salmon pies, as well as lemon bars. The rest are her own.

“This time of year it’s very, very slow because you have everyone on a diet — most of them are falling off at this point, so I think I’m almost back to where I should be,” Kieger said. “Any month without a holiday, you have to create your own happiness, if you will, in the bakery industry, so January is a tough one, I knew that coming in. February will be great, and you get into March getting into Easter and then you’re back into wedding season.”

She’s filled Sweet Cakes Bake Shop’s cases with giant cupcakes, oversized brownies, croissants, scones, cinnamon buns, glazed, jelly and Boston creme donuts, and something she calls the “cookie sammich,” two cookies with various cream filling between them.

Freezers are filled with peanut butter mousse cake, German chocolate cake, strawberry shortcake, lemon layer cake and meat pies.

She also offers two soups at lunch.

Kieger said she’d like her bakery to be known for a good cup of coffee and large portions.

“When you’re getting a product, ‘Wow, look at the size of that,’ I think that holds a lot of value to people,” she said. “I’m not looking to get rich. I just want to do what I love, be in an accepting environment and provide people with something that makes them happy.” 

Her days start at the bakery between 3 and 4 a.m., turning on the ovens, the coffee and the music. Sweet Cakes Bake Shop is open Wednesday through Friday 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Sundays are spent with her family and Monday and Tuesday are prep days for the week ahead. She continues to take orders for custom cakes and recently picked up a wholesale account for cakes and pastries at Bow Street Market in Freeport.

Kieger said the community has been amazingly supportive. In the future, she may broaden hours and may hire help. She’s already at one-woman capacity.

“I always feel like every time I’m selling a cupcake or a cookie or anything, that’s a part of me that’s leaving and I want it to be the best part of me that they’re walking away with,” she said. “So I keep having to remind myself, step back, don’t do too much, do these things really well, and that’s all I need to do right now.”

kskelton@sunjournal.com

Tara Kieger gets a doughnut for her 5-year-old daughter, Quinn, before Quinn heads off to school in Lisbon on Thursday. Kieger opened Sweet Cakes Bake Shop in the former Benoit’s Bakery in November. “Seems like just yesterday that we opened,” she said. (Sun Journal photo by Daryn Slover)

Tara Kieger looks up from making pastries as a customer walks into Sweet Cakes Bake Shop in Lisbon on Thursday. “Most people have a hobby. Well, mine is making cupcakes and cookies and such,” Kieger said.  (Sun Journal photo by Daryn Slover)

Tara Kieger said that for the most part, jobs for pastry chefs in Maine are largely seasonal jobs. So Kieger decided to open her own year-round bakery. (Sun Journal photo by Daryn Slover)

Tara Kieger prepares a pastry platter for a medical conference in Brunswick. (Sun Journal photo by Daryn Slover)