Turley publications photo by Jonathan Cook

Tessa Dagger stands behind her cakettes.

Coffee shop offers something different

By Jonathan Cook

Turley Publications Reporter

WARREN – “If you like cake,” says Tessa Dagger of Wales, “you will love cakettes.”

She speaks from experience. Just over a year ago, Dagger found a recipe for cakeballs online. The flavor was red velvet. She whipped up a batch and “My family flipped for them. People at work flipped for them.”

So Dagger stayed with it and got creative with the flavors. “They kept getting more interesting, more and more fun,” she said. “Before I knew it people were paying me to do them for their weddings and showers and things like that.”

What is a “cakette”? No, it’s not a tiny piece of cake. “It’s so much better,” Tessa says. The first step in the process is to bake a cake, that’s true. But then it takes a twist. The cake is blended with frosting until it is incredibly moist. Then the mixture is rolled into balls and dipped in chocolate or vanilla.

Tessa had taken over her home kitchen to fill all of her friends’ orders when her husband, Christopher Dagger asked her if she wanted to start a business. At first she said “no”. But soon they were looking for a kitchen to rent so they could make their creations commercially.

One day while visiting Tessa’s mother who lived in Warren, they learned of the empty restaurant near the post office.

A cleanup and paint job later, “and here we are,” she said.

Chistopher points out that they are there at least 12 hours per day.

“We have to be here at five to bake the muffins,” Tessa explains.

And with their restaurant-sized space, they have created a full menu, which includes a huge selection of frozen drinks, cold drinks, hot drinks, grilled Panini, cold sandwiches, ice cream and quality coffee.

“So far so good,” Tessa said. “It was a little slow to start.” She says the reason for that is they are not serving the traditional bacon and eggs. “We don’t want it to smell like eggs. We want it smell like a bakery,” she says.

And that it does. With their one employee, Kyle Lavalley, a Pathfinder culinary student baking about 29 sheet cakes a week, the smell is sweet and warm.

They are featuring 12 different flavors of cakettes plus seasonal varieties. Right now, says Tessa, they are conducting research into s’mores flavor for the summer.

Tessa says people can order online, or over the phone.

Custom made orders run $95 for a box of 125. Or, a smaller box of a dozen runs $10. For standard flavors, the large box is $75, a dozen runs $7.99.

Cakettes has two wholesale accounts where each little cakette “goes like crazy” for more than $1.

Tessa stresses cakettes are good for all occasions. “We can put pretty much anything you want on a cakette.” And “no balancing a plate and a fork at a party.”

These little sweets go exceptionally well with coffee, and Cakettes features a quality blend. Christopher points out that Starbucks charges $4 “for just a regular coffee. We can do something similar for $2.50.”

On top of that, “we don’t charge for flavor shots,” many of which can be had sugar free.

“A lot of people that work in Boston, it’s really exciting for them to have a coffee shop where they can get a triple espresso and that kind of thing,” says Tessa.

Anyone in the area for lunch will find a good deal, too. On June 5, Gary Blanchard can be found strumming his acoustic guitar beginning at 7 p.m.