Kellie’s Kandies • Cedar Park
Kellie’s Kandies • Cedar Park
By JJ Velasquez Friday, 19 June 2009
About 300 bins of sweets and baked goods fill Kellie Moore’s home pantry. Her children, not being fond of sweets, are indifferent to them, but Moore is earning a reputation in town for her decadent and decorative sugary treats.
Moore started Kellie’s Kandies in February 2007 selling candy trees — decorative topiaries made of anything from Hershey’s chocolate Kisses to gummy bears.
She soon found that most of her business was being shipped to New York City, as gifts for bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. Inspired by the television show “Ace of Cakes,” she began baking sculpted cakes covered in fondant, a sugary cream coating used on sweets and pastries.
But Moore is known mostly for her cookies, which come in all shapes, sizes and packages.
Patrons of It’s a Grind coffeehouse might find cookies from Kellie’s Kandies on display in the coffee shop’s cases.
The cookies have a spicy, gingery kick and are topped with a healthy helping of fondant.
Moore finds fondant useful, as it is a malleable but tasty improvement to the presentation of her pastries. She gets creative — she made one cake in the shape of a duffle bag, and her cookies can take the form of anything from winged insects to A-line dresses.
Moore treats her baking as an art form and said she often flips through art books for inspiration.
“I like to look through art books to get different perspectives rather than just the pastry industry, because I don’t like to just copy somebody,” she said. “I like to do my own thing.”
Moore’s background is not in the culinary arts. After studying marketing and accounting in college for two years, she worked in the corporate world. When she was laid off, she decided to be a stay-at-home mom, focusing on raising her children and baking, and eventually starting her own business.
Moore does not have a storefront. Most of her business is conducted through her website, which has a comprehensive catalog of her products.
Locally, she relies on growing her clientele through word of mouth.
She said joining the Cedar Park Chamber of Commerce has helped her business and has allowed her to market her product more effectively.
Before joining the chamber, most of her business came from birthdays and special occasions.
She now helps other business owners market their companies with business card pastries, which they can give to their clients. She prints business cards on sugary paper and molds it into the cookies’ fondant coating.
Moore relies on her originality to keep her business going.
“You just want to do things that no one has seen — you know, something fun and crazy,” she said.
Recent additions to Kellie’s inventory:
- Birthday Party Pack: These birthday cookies come with do-it-yourself decoration — fondant and royal icing tubes to pipe on more decoration — and candy. The packs start at $36.
- Coffee dippers: These cookies are available at It’s a Grind coffeehouse, to complement your hot drink. They are, essentially, Moore’s original recipe without fondant, and are $1.25 each.
- Logo cookies: Show up at a client’s door with a box of cookies adorned with your company’s logo. Each cookie is $2.75-$5.25, depending on size and design.
Kellie’s Kandies, 826-4294, www.kellieskandies.com, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
