Introducing The Piekie

Lateshia Dowell started baking for the first time when she was 26 years old. On Thanksgiving Day in 2013, she was waiting, somewhat impatiently she coyly admits, for her mother’s famous sweet potato pie to leave the oven. Unable to handle the suspense, she took a spoon of the sweet and spicy filling, fashioned it into a dome, packaged it neatly into an envelope of dough, and tossed the bite-size concoction into the oven alongside the pie. Dowell says her confection was fully baked in less than half the time of her mother’s full-size pie but tasted just as delicious. What followed was several months of recipe-testing and tasting what eventually would become the “piekie” — a portmanteau of pie and cookie. As a result, Dowell opened her online shop, Flaky Bakes in June 2014.

Holding a demanding full-time job in communications at the time, Dowell’s days were painstakingly long. She says she would wake up at 5 a.m., bake and deliver the goods by 7 a.m., get to work by 8 a.m., and parse through the logistics of the business in the evenings. It was an exhausting schedule, but Dowell credits much of Flaky Bakes’ success to this kind of personal investment. “By hand-delivering the piekies, I formed connections with my customers,” she says. “And people buy based on that personal connection. Sometimes they would even invite me inside — that part was a little creepy,” she laughs. “It would be like inviting the Domino’s guy inside!”

To read the rest of the story, please go to: Hour Detroit