TREMONT, Ill. (WMBD) – With sweets, treats and a lot of sugar, Rebekah Baer spends most of her days in her food truck called The Baking Baer.
“I’ll try a recipe and I’m like, ‘This is a nine out of 10.’ And I’m like, ‘I know I can get it to like a 10 out of 10.’ And I’ll tweak stuff and really like come back and try it again and work on it until it’s exactly where I want it,” Baer said.
“I do all my own recipes and so I love the trial and error of coming up with recipes and just trying to tweak little things.”
rebekah baer
Baer makes specialty desserts, including cupcakes, cakes and macaroons when she’s catering events, festivals and markets.
“I was going to school actually for journalism ironically up in Chicago at Loyola University and I entered a cheesecake competition and I won first place for an original recipe,” she laughed.
“Things kind of started picking up. I realized I liked it better than any of my other jobs and I ran with it from there.”
rebekah baer
For the last three years, Baer has been renting local kitchen space to make her creations. In the fall of 2019, she considered opening up a storefront. But with the pandemic of 2020 in her rear view mirror, she said she’s grateful that idea fell through at the time.
Baer said, “It would’ve been a lot of overhead and it included a venue as well that would’ve been closed down for a good chunk of the year.”
That’s when the idea for a food truck came along. Most recently, The Baking Baer made its debut in Baer’s hometown of Tremont for the Turkey Festival. Now she already got her eyes set on expanding with an additional stationary setup.
“Now I’m actually moving to my own permanent kitchen space in Morton, which I’m really excited about,” she said.
While entrepreneurship has always been in her blood, Baer is hesitant to say if she’s always seen herself becoming a business owner.
She said, “My mom says I talked about it when I was little. I don’t really remember that, but my dad has owned his business. My grandpa owned a business, so I guess it kind of runs in the family.”
But she’s excited about the freedom it brings her.
The Baking Baer will be at Tres Rojas Winery in Washington on July 3 from 3-7pm.
