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A host of bakeries around town serve up a wide range of baked goods, sweets and pastries, but the Delectable Cakery in Mount Rainier focuses on one thing, and does it well: sweet potato cake.
With its deeply moist texture — almost sticky, but not overly sweet — firm crumb and rich sweet potato-spice flavor, it's easy to see why the Washingtonian Sweet Potato Cake is already well-known in several area venues. You can find it at Nordstrom stores up and down the East Coast, but also Carolina Kitchen, Tropicana Eatery and a range of other cafés and restaurants in the region. But the owners, cousins Brian Rhone and Derek Lowery, are thrilled to finally offer a retail shop — the first of many, they hope.
"It's exciting to see a dream turn into reality," Rhone said.
With its trademark enormous hand-painted bow over the shop window, the Delectable Cakery on Rhode Island Avenue looks like a huge present waiting to be opened. It is meant to be an experience: a combination of classy, formal tradition and the simple, welcoming comfort of a home kitchen. All this is owed to the philosophy of Lowery's mother, Laurine Helen Lowery, whose memory inspires and permeates the business.
She got the original sweet potato cake recipe from her sister, Derek Lowery said, and he in turn began baking it in his youth, taking it to parties and potlucks. When he moved to the District area, a co-worker took the cake to a private club, and that was the beginning of the cake's fame; within a few years, Lowey was baking them in his apartment for several clients.
After Nordstrom took it on, he finally decided to turn it into a proper business; Rhone came to join him in the last two years. The bakery is located in Landover Hills, and the retail store opened in Mount Rainier's Artspace building just two months ago.
In that short time, Derek Lowery and Rhone have already hosted local schoolchildren for fall activities, like an indoor pumpkin patch and cider and cake tastings, and will soon be hosting an activity on formal table setting for Thanksgiving, as well as giving away 100 turkeys. Being a part of their community is extremely important to them, they said? especially since the product they offer aims to be a high-end cake they want to make available locally.
After all, that was how Laurine Lowery would do it.
"We built our store around that. ... She would not turn anyone away," Derek Lowery said.
A single 10-inch sweet potato cake costs $39; a loaf cake, $15, and the personal cake $5. Loaf cakes and 10-inch pound cakes run $39, also available in lemon, butter and marble flavors; there is also a 10-inch chocolate-sweet potato swirl cake for $39. If you're walking in for just a taste, cupcakes in the classic sweet potato or chocolate variety sell for $2.99.
The cousins are happy with their location in Prince George's County; it's important to both to show that black men can run a successful business that's not a "chicken shack" or a "barbershop," Rhone said. "We just sell cake."
Derek Lowery said they do intend to introduce other types of cakes as the business grows, and he already works with seasonal flavors, but will always center on the unique and popular sweet potato cake.
"My mother had all sorts of cakes, but this was her special cake," Derek Lowery said. "This one cake keeps us so busy."
Delectable Cakery
3311 Rhode Island Ave., Mount Rainier
Phone: 301-577-7115
Hours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Closed Sunday
