The Sweetest Person Around

Have you ever met a dessert person you didn’t like? Me either. They are quite literally the sweetest people around. And what about those lucky few who figure out how to whip passion into profession? Those people really take the cake. Or in Tareka Lofton’s case, she bakes the cake so you can take the cake.

The owner and pâtissier extraordinaire of Loft22 Cakes in Near Southside, Tareka is a literal confection. She wears a permanent smile and is just as generous with her laughs as she is with her frosting. Tareka is the quintessential happy baker. But if sweetness was all this pastry chef had going for her, this beloved Fort Worth bakery would have closed its ovens long ago.

Tareka was Madeworthy’s cover girl exactly five years ago in 2018. She was a year into her business, making a name for herself in the very kitchen where she once interned for Robbie Werner at Stir Crazy Baked Goods, trying to satisfy credit requirements to graduate from culinary school, barely making ends meet. “I remember Robbie telling me, ‘I can’t pay you, but you can have the tips from the tip jar.’ And that would sometimes be just enough to get a McDonald’s burger and put the [rest] in the tank,” Tareka recalls solemnly. She pauses briefly, allowing herself to relive the hard days, before laughing about her first wedding cake order.

Photo courtesy of Loft22 Cakes

And this is how the rest of the conversation unfolds. The artist’s journey to bake for a living, and a good living at that, is filled with bittersweet moments, full circle moments, aha moments and come-to-Jesus moments. But what has kept her on course, even when derailed, is one essential ingredient – faith.

“I’m a spiritual person. I believe that whatever you’re meant to do is already inside of you. So, in some small way, cake was always there. It’s my purpose. I feel like I’m doing what I was born to do,” says Tareka.

This conviction that she was pursuing her destiny was put to the test when March of 2020 arrived, just as Loft22 was catching its stride.

“It was a struggle those first two years. I really didn’t know that we would make it. But right at the top of 2020, we had good press. Business was booming. Weddings were coming in left and right. It felt like we were in a movie. And then the whole world shut down, and every wedding I had on the books canceled.”

Tareka was forced to lay off most of her staff. Like the millions of other small business owners across the country, she had to operate as lean as possible to have any chance of survival. Down to just two bakers, herself included, the eternal optimist looked for a sign. And she was just as surprised as anyone to find that sign in a roll of toilet paper.

photo credit: Lexie Krug Photography

The cake artist combined her sense of humor with her baking prowess and made a toilet paper cake that she posted on Instagram during the shelter-in-place order.

Loft22 went viral.

“People were ordering like six of them acting like it was real tissue,” Tareka laughs. Her tissue cakes were delivered to the doorsteps of friends and neighbors who missed each other, to hospital staff working on the front lines, even to Mayor Price. “It was making people laugh and making people happy.”

But that was just local demand. Once Loft22 was featured on NBC’s Today show, the baker from Texarkana was swept up in a craze of her own doing. “I woke up to almost 1,000 emails from people all over the country. ‘How can I get one of those tissue paper cakes in Salt Lake City? I’m in Miami. I’m in New Jersey. I’m in New York. I’m. In LA. Can you send one to Idaho?’ Our phone was ringing off the hook. I had to get a second phone line installed. Both lines stayed jammed up. People were getting upset because they couldn’t get through,” Tareka recalls in disbelief.

Tareka brought her employees back to work, and they spent the next year riding the wave of good publicity. Despite the challenges of supply chain disruptions and shipping logistics, Tareka has a fondness for that period of global uncertainty.

“I wish I could bottle that kind of momentum and recreate that. But it was just a moment. It was something organic that happened, and it literally sustained us for the whole year with no weddings, no customs, no events, no nothing. From that experience, I learned that there is more than one way to thrive.”

Three years have passed since the quarantine cake frenzy, and Tareka continues to find herself at the center of unusual experiences. In May of 2022, she was selected to compete on Season One of the Dr. Seuss Baking Challenge on Amazon Prime which premiered in late December that same year. For Tareka, this wasn’t just an opportunity. It was a dream come true. Before she started baking professionally, Tareka watched Food Network religiously. Just a decade later, she found herself baking whimsical cakes alongside other talented pastry chefs and cake artists on television.

“That was the biggest highlight of my career. It was equally amazing and terrifying,” Tareka beams.

Listening to her talk about the travel, being on set, performing for the cameras, and meeting her idol, host Tamara Mowry-Housley (also a preacher’s kid like Lofton), is like watching a little kid read Dr. Seuss for the first time.

“They give you the star treatment. They put you in the luxury hotel, this BMW picks you up… Little me from Texarkana. It was incredible. All the participants were some of the best in the world. Just to be considered among them was very validating. Like, I’ve got to be worth something.”

Photos courtesy of Adam Rose/Prime Video

Lofton and her partner made it halfway through the competition before it was time to return home. She proved her abilities, though, with her Seussical creations and shone as brightly as her yellow chef’s coat.

“It was the experience of a lifetime. It would take some really major things to top that. I mean, who knows what the future holds, but so far, in my 41 years of living, that’s up there.”

Anyone with experience in the kitchen will tell you, baking is a balance. Achieving the right combination of texture and flavor requires discipline and skill. Tareka Lofton obviously knows this balance well and applies it to life. Because if anyone knows about taking the bitter with the sweet, it’s her.