Flour Power

When you swing open the Factory Girl Bake Shop door, you are overcome by the irresistible smell of warm butter and sugar. A gentle crackle resonates from a vintage record player, setting a cinematic backdrop for customers peering into a pastry case filled with soft shapes and pastel hues.

Behind the counter, owner and baker Kimberly Scola takes orders from a pink rotary phone, backlit by a wall of coral rose–printed Laura Ashley wallpaper—a nod to Scola’s background in design. “The biggest compliment I get when people walk into the bakery is that it’s like walking into someone’s home,” says Scola, who has been stirring batter for as long as she can remember. “Baking was a huge part of my childhood. My grandmother, mother, and sister were always in the kitchen, and I grew up experiencing its comfort.”

After working in production and graphic design, Scola taught fifth graders in New York City and later transitioned into owning her own business, selling handmade pottery, embroidery, and sewn goods.

Realizing her need to get back to the creative arts, she sought a change. In 2014, her sister and brother-in-law, Kelly and Stacy Casanova, were in the process of opening Factory Fuel, a coffee shop in the former Stangl Factory in Flemington. “They needed a baker, and I needed a change,” she says. “I had no professional food experience, but they put me in charge of figuring it out.”

Scola began by baking her way through a copy of Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook that a former student had gifted her. “I read it cover-to-cover,” she says, “and loved being challenged by the creative and technical aspects.”

After two successful years baking for Factory Fuel, an opportunity arose to rent a former bakery space in New Hope. Scola jumped at the chance, and in 2016 she opened Factory Girl Bake Shop, at 45 North Main Street, the name an homage to the former Stangl Factory space.

While Scola puts fun spins on her creations, her style is anchored in the classics. “Trends are fun, but I’m focused on what people know and want, like chocolate-chip cookies and brownies,” she says. “I like doing a little weird, but not too weird, because it turns people off.”

Factory Girl Bake Shop emphasizes seasonality and floral flavors. “Decorating with flowers is so elegant,” she says. “I didn’t want to take the time to learn how to pipe individual frosting flowers. I wanted nature to do the work.”

Scola originally sourced from local florists, then used flowers that were free from fertilizers and pesticides and eventually began growing her own via heat mats and grow lights in the bakery basement.

Flower purveyor Peter McCrohan of Shoppons Run Farm in Delaware Township learned about her passion for local flowers and offered the use of three of his growing rows on his farm. There, Scola transplants thousands of basement seedlings and grows fruiting perennials like raspberries, blackberries, currants, strawberries, as well as roses, which, among other items, gets turned into her rose and rosé frosting. “My hands,” she says, “are either in dough or in dirt.”

In addition to decorating her cakes with flowers, Scola dries and presses pansies and violas to adorn sugar cookies, dries and crushes forsythia, quince, lilac, and rose petals to make homemade sprinkles, and harvests honeysuckle nectar and whips it into cream to be piped into creampuffs, which are only available in the brief time the honeysuckle is in bloom. “I love working with seasonality,” she says. “The flowers we use to decorate cakes paint an exact picture of time and season.”

What Scola is not able to grow or harvest, she sources locally. Fruit and berries come from Manoff Market Gardens and Solebury Orchards in Solebury and Bonacorsi Family Farm in Franklin Township, in Hunterdon County. Produce and herbs are sourced from Hungry Work Farm in Delaware Township and Zone 7 in Ringoes. Honey is from Solebury Nectar’s store in New Hope.

“I love the River Towns,” Scola says. “Our customers are local, environmental, and eco-conscious, who understand why we won’t make a strawberry shortcake in winter. They make us feel like family. It’s connections like these that help make this little bakery possible.”

Lauren Johnson is a freelance writer and regular contributor to River Towns. She insists you try a Factory Girl Bake Shop canelé—delicious and fun to say.