“Sweet” is not a word often used to describe parent-teen relationships. But it’s a fitting adjective for the delightful mother-daughter duo of Lila Bean Bakery: Margaret Logan and her 16-year-old daughter Lila Happel, who live in Portland. The love and enthusiasm the pair have for baking and each other is evident in every delicious thing that comes out of their oven. While the work is labor intensive and time consuming, they break it up with kitchen dance parties and favorite movies. Their vibe is decidedly girlfriend to girlfriend, with moments of gentle parental guidance sprinkled in for good measure.
Logan baked chocolate chip cookies with her own mom as a child, perfecting them over time. In contrast, Happel dove into the art of French patisserie, taking on choux pastry, egg custard, and homemade fondant during the pandemic lockdown in 2020. She turned to online videos on cake and cookie decorating, thinking to herself, “That looks like fun.”
Logan was supportive of her daughter’s pastime. “I [was] running out for new tools and ingredients,” she says. All the while, she thought to herself, “This is so great! Whatever ‘this’ is, we’re getting through it!”
The pair continued baking as pandemic precautions lifted, Happel balancing kitchen time with schoolwork and a serious passion for the piano. She celebrated birthdays for friends with special cakes adorned with Swiss meringue buttercream, airy whipped ganache, marzipan layers, and sugared fruit. Happel’s 17-tier masterpiece featured chocolate cake, peanut butter frosting, and lavish embellishment with Nutter Butter cookies.
In August 2021, the family’s oven broke. “And I was like, thank God!” says Logan, who was reluctant to start a business. “I wanted to do this for her, but I had no idea how, and [the broken oven] gave me a reprieve.” Happel was disappointed. But by the time the new oven, a commercial-style Bosch, arrived in October, her mother overcame her initial hesitancy to start a baking business and said, “Let’s do Christmas cookies! It’ll be fun! We’ll sell them to friends and go from there.” They created Santa Claus cookies with curlicue beards, Mrs. Claus cookies sporting gold spectacles, and cookies of blushing snowmen and scarf-wearing polar bears. All got spoken for as fast as they were produced.
Just after the pair had caught their breath, Mary Allen Lindemann of Coffee by Design came calling. She helped them move the operation to a commercial kitchen at St. Luke’s Church in Portland’s West End, and promptly requested cookies depicting figures significant to Black History Month to sell at her coffee shops. The Lila Bean team researched ideas and learned about each personality they would represent. “I would follow Amanda Gorman to the apocalypse,” says Happel. “And it was a quite an honor to make a cookie in Maya Angelou’s likeness.”
Happel spent weeks drawing and planning, blending colors and practicing the layering technique necessary to make them work. Stencils were designed for each cookie. Logan handled baking and cutting while Happel concentrated on decorating. Throughout February they created sugar cookies with identifiable details like Gorman’s red headband, Angelou’s turban, and the exact red-violet hue for Desmond Tutu’s robe and cap. Luster dust was employed joyfully.
“Lila is a perfectionist,”
says Logan. Happel agrees, adding, “It was important to do them each justice and get the details just right.” The intricate cookies sold for five dollars each, with proceeds benefiting Black Owned Maine, a nonprofit that promotes economic empowerment for Black people in the state.
The project brought Logan and Happel more local recognition than they anticipated. “We don’t want to be defined by those cookies,” Happel says. So, the duo mapped out a plan for the summer to expand their business beyond decorated cookies. Cream puffs filled with homemade strawberry jam and vanilla cream are on the menu, along with a variety of scones and individual servings of crème brûlée. Custom layer cakes are always available, as is Happel’s divine opera cake, a classic French dessert of almond sponge cake soaked in coffee syrup and layered with chocolate ganache.
“It’s one of the first things I made during the pandemic,” she says, pulling up a picture of it on her flour-dusted phone. “It’s really good,” she admits, smiling sweetly. She and Logan dream of having a small shop somewhere in the greater Portland area.
“During [lockdown], we went inward, wanting to do things that were important to us,”
says Logan. In the end, the pair brought joy to their community, sweetening their relationship along the way.
Find out more at www.lilabeanbakery.com.
