Pastry chef begins to grow business with kitchen, holiday pop-up shop
Nov. 23, 2020
A Sioux Falls pastry chef has a new commercial kitchen and is preparing to open a holiday pop-up shop downtown where she hopes to have a permanent store next year.
Keyes Clemmer of Prairie Cocoa & Confections began growing a following this summer through the Falls Park Farmers Market. Each week, she created edible art designed around a theme. Creations ranged from macarons with panda faces and mummy hot cocoa bombs to sugar cookie “nachos and jalapenos” and cake “corn on the cob and chicken drumsticks.”
Now, from her kitchen on East Eighth Street, she’s filling orders for the online-only version of the winter farmers market, creating custom desserts for customers and corporate clients, and teaching pastry classes.
And that’s where she’ll prepare baked goods for her temporary spot next to OG Greens in the Jones421 Building for the holidays. She hopes to have a permanent spot in the North Phillips Avenue building in the spring and would continue to use the commercial kitchen for production.
“There’s definitely a niche here in Sioux Falls for what I can edible art. There’s a big enough pie for everyone to have their own little slice. It takes a lot of time to produce these things.”
Even the “simple-looking” desserts that Clemmer makes are complex creations.
“I love making this apple bourbon barrel cake for Thanksgiving, but there are five components to one layer, and it’s a three-layer cake, so I’ve got 15 components to make for this one cake.”
As a trained pastry chef, she knows the importance of quality ingredients, so the expense of those and her extensive labor lead to premium prices.
“But at the same time, if you contact me and you say, ‘OK, I’m having 50 people for a baby shower, and I have a $100 budget for desserts. What can you do?’ I can create a beautiful little dessert spread for you because some things are less expensive than other things. So you make one thing that’s like a showstopper and then you make other things that are beautiful that complement it, but they are not necessarily expensive. So I work with budgets.”
Clemmer has set up an area in the commercial kitchen so clients can talk over their ideas and see and taste samples of her work. There’s also ample room for tables to be spread out for participants in her classes.
Customers don’t have to worry about finding a parking spot when they come to pick up their order. They can drive in the alley, and she’ll pop out the door.
Clemmer is basically a one-woman show for Prairie Cocoa & Confections, from the creation of ideas and the marketing to the shopping and baking to the packaging and the sales. Two part-time staff members help in the kitchen, and her family helped at the farmers market.
That means she works some very long hours. Clemmer started baking special Halloween “mystery boxes” for the final farmers market weekend at 6:30 on Friday morning and didn’t go home until 3 p.m. Saturday after the market closed. “It was like 30 hours straight of work, and I decided I’m too old for this. People must have thought I was intoxicated. I don’t think I was coherent at that point,” she joked.
But the joy she gets from making “all these fun things so people can enjoy their celebrations, especially now,” fuels her.
And that passion will lead to additional offerings. The legal name for the business is Prairie C LLC because Clemmer is envisioning all the directions it could go. Prairie Cocoa could be a miniature hot cocoa truck like the one she saw in Scotland while vacationing with her son. Prairie Catering could incorporate the experience she gained earlier in her career as a savory chef on the East Coast. There’s Prairie Culinary for classes, Prairie Cakes, Prairie Cookies, Prairie Celebrations.
The next big piece is the holiday pop-up shop. It will be filled Tuesday and Wednesday with Thanksgiving-themed treats. After the holiday weekend, the the regular weekly schedule will be Thursday through Saturday into the new year. Hours will be 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“I have a lot of fun things planned for Christmas,” Clemmer said. “I will be staying here instead of going home to Boston this year. To kind of make up for that, I’m just going to have fun in the kitchen.”
Editor’s note: The hours have been updated since the article was first published.
