Photos by Elizabeth Gelineau
Black Cat Vegan Bakery has just opened and there’s already a line waiting outside the small building. Customers give their orders at the window as pink boxes are filled with pastries. An assortment sits behind glass, with cheerful yellow signs bearing their names: dirty chai cinnamon rolls, brown butter chocolate chunk cookies, toasted cookie butter croissant…the list goes on.
“We have been so busy since day one, much busier than we anticipated,” says owner Lindsey Sholes as she ices a cake. “Every week, we make twice as much as we did the week before and we end up with twice as many customers.” Sholes baked vegan treats for several years, contributing to pastry cases at Nova Espresso and Dropout Bakery, before starting her own micro bakery. “I am vegan, but I really started vegan baking for some friends who had children with allergies,” she explains. “Because I had a background in vegan baking, it was something I could do for them. People thought I was doing it as a profession and started asking to put in orders with me. It just exploded from there.” She started accepting orders under the business name Lindsey Bakes.
Eventually, she found the perfect bakery building in Foley and made the move with her family last spring, selling out of a local bookshop until she opened Black Cat Vegan Bakery in October. “The name was inspired by my love for black cats,” she says. “They are usually the last ones to be adopted and always the first to be abandoned. It’s nothing formal, but I have my own cat sanctuary where we have adopted the misfit black cats. When I came here to look at the spot, there were two black cats sitting in the front. The first thing Alex [who owns neighboring Cheeseburger Randy’s] said was, ‘Oh, that’s bad luck.’ And I said ‘No, it’s not. That’s good luck. That’s a sign right there.’’’
Her menu rotates bimonthly and is filled with a combination of staples and specials. “We’ve nicknamed our brown butter chocolate chunk cookie ‘everyone’s favorite cookie’ because it doesn’t matter how many we make, they always sell out,” she says. The dirty chai cinnamon roll, once a special, now appears as a menu mainstay. “It was outselling the regular cinnamon roll and when we said that we weren’t going to have it anymore, my customers almost rioted,” she laughs. A matcha bar — Sholes is a self-described matcha lover — with organic, housemade syrups, along with drip coffee, makes the bakery a one-stop shop for everyone’s sugar and caffeine needs. Her baked goods are loved by vegans and nonvegans alike. “I didn’t want it to be good for vegan food,” she says. “I just wanted it to be good.” Based on customer response, it is all that and more.
On the Menu
Toasted Cookie Butter Croissant
Filled with Biscoff cookie butter custard and topped with toasted meringue (and a Biscoff cookie), this one-of-a-kind treat is sure to satisfy your sugar fix.
Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookie
With a sprinkle of sea salt, chocolate chunks and a buttery base, it’s no wonder this cookie has been dubbed everyone’s favorite.
Dirty Chai Cinnamon Roll
All the deliciously gooey parts of a cinnamon roll, plus chai-spiced filling and an espresso icing on top, makes this pastry a bestseller for a reason.
Poached Pear Almond Danish
Layers of dough wrap around a sweet poached pear. Just add a sprinkle of almonds and you have reached fruity, flaky perfection.
Black Cat Vegan Bakery • 209 S Alston St., Foley • Thu – Sun 8 a.m. – sell out
