You'll want to eat dessert first if you buy from this Oak Creek woman's home-based bakery

We've all eaten dessert before dinner.

One Oak Creek woman turned that concept into a home-based bakery business.

Isabella Corbitt, 22, launched Desserts1st Bakery & Cake Shop last year. Her husband, Keshaun Corbitt, came up with the name.

“It’s because I eat dessert first before all my meals,” she said, laughing.

Before making it official, Corbitt had created some delectable desserts for events like graduation parties and weddings for people she knew. After doing that for five or six years, Corbitt decided to create her company as a side hustle while working as a preschool teacher full time.

Her first order after launching the company was for a wedding cake.

“No one really expects to book that when you’re first starting off, just because it’s the most important day in people’s lives,” she said. “You don’t want to mess it up. (You’re) just hoping the heat doesn’t make it fall apart in your car.”

The client was a repeat customer who’d contracted Corbitt to create a chocolate candy wedding cake.

“It’s obviously not a traditional wedding cake, but the way it looked drew a lot of attention to it,” Corbitt said.

Also a guest at the wedding, Corbitt was introduced to many new people and was able to network for her business.

What's baking?

Corbitt still gets most excited for weddings, and although they can become repetitive, “they’re all equally important,” she said.

However, her favorite culinary offering are her cakesickles (minimum order of 12) and cupcakes. There are minimum orders of six per flavor, per online order at www.desserts1stbakeryandcakeshop.com, for all mini cakes, cupcakes, cake jars, brownie slices, stuffed cookies, and fondant themed cookies which cost between $2 and $3.50 apiece.

Cakesickles can be chocolate, French vanilla, red velvet, lemon, strawberry, cinnamon sugar and funfetti.

Corbitt also offers cakes, with a four-inch round cake starting at $35, up to a 12-inch round cake costing $95. Heart shaped cakes cost $65. Sheet cake costs vary from a 9x13 single-layer for $45 up to a 12x18 single-layer for $85. Corbitt also offers multi-tiered versions of her cakes.

Cake flavors include signature vanilla, chocolate, peanut butter and jelly, Biscoff cookie crunch, chocolate covered pretzel, Snickers, Fruity Pebbles, smores, toasted marshmallow and many more.

“Please understand our bakery is a made-to-order home bakery with specific batch quantities, therefore we sell in increments that would produce the least amount of waste possible,” Corbitt said on her website.

Desserts1st items to be featured at new Hales Corners village market

Items will be sold individually at the Hales Corners village market which starts 3-7 p.m. June 14 at Hales Corners Park, 5765 S. New Berlin Road. This is the first year Hales Corners has offered a farmers market experience for about a decade, according to Village President Dan Besson.

Corbitt said this is her first farmers market and she likes that it is the first one for Hales Corners in so many years.

Corbitt hopes to bring Desserts1st to other markets in the future.

A lifetime of experience

Corbitt started baking at the age of 6 when she made her own birthday cake.

“It was very good,” she said.

Growing up, Corbitt said her family had various yearly get-togethers and “with me being so young everyone who was older was in charge of cooking.” She wanted to help and asked if she could try baking something and started making cakes.

“For every event I was basically in charge of desserts,” she said.

At age 16 she got her first job at Gigi’s Cupcakes where she eventually became a baker/decorator and stayed until she was 19.

“I gained a lot of insight from coworkers,” Corbitt said, adding it helped solidify baking as something she was passionate about.

She didn’t go to school for it, she said, because “the timing just wasn’t right.”

Cottage food laws allow shelf-stable goods to be sold out of the home without licensing. This does limit the offerings, as something like cheesecake needs different temperatures and wouldn’t be allowed.

That’s not the only challenge of a home-based business.

“It does get difficult working out of your home because you don’t have your own space,” Corbitt said.

She and her husband were recently looking at places with the hopes of opening a brick-and-mortar shop one day.

“I would hope in the future that’s what’s coming,” Corbitt said, adding it’s likely still a couple years away and would happen when she transitions to baking full time. “At the rate we’re going I think it’s very doable.”

Contact Erik S. Hanley at erik.hanley@jrn.com. Like his Facebook page, The Redheadliner, and follow him on Twitter @Redheadliner.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Home-based bakery in Oak Creek focuses on dessert first