Did it start with cupcakes? Is that when the world fell in love with individual-sized desserts? Mug cakes soon took over, allowing for the full cake experience—measuring, stirring, microwaving and eating—in 10 minutes.
HoneyCakes, from Terrell Johnson and Natasha Ettienne-Modeste, is a similarly sized treat. Find Baileys-spiked chocolate mousse and cheesecake layered on a graham cracker crust packed into 4 ounces.
Johnson says it’s all about convenience and portion control. With a full-sized cheesecake, which they also make for custom orders, “you feel compelled to finish all of it, in one sitting sometimes.”
The couple, set to marry next April, both have nonfood-related full-time jobs. They bake out of Lorton’s business incubator Frontier Kitchen, with hopes of pushing the cake-in-a-jar into local shops and hospitals. (Johnson’s mom, who lives in a mental health facility, is the inspiration for the company, both for her love of cheesecake and the company’s commitment to donating 5 percent of profits to mental health research.) With this in mind, HoneyCakes is developing new, healthier flavors like a banana nut with a granola base. Current flavors include limoncello, caramel butterscotch schnapps mousse and raspberry port.
Johnson and Ettienne-Modeste work to keep their business life and their romantic life from colliding too much, setting aside a standing Thursday date night (Scrabble, Scandal) where there’s no talk of work. But for their wedding, HoneyCakes will creep in. Once they settle on a signature cocktail, they’ll create a coordinating cheesecake. // honeycakesdesserts.com
