Around 6:30 p.m. most nights, Ashley Savoy’s home in Bow transforms.
After family dinner with her husband and three girls, the group gets to work like a well-oiled machine, clearing the table, loading up the dishwasher and sweeping the floor.
Her husband then takes care of the girls’ nighttime routine as Savoy switches into “baker mode” — pulling out the baking rack, setting up pans and sanitizing the kitchen.
“It’s like a whole production,” Savoy said, laughing. “I feel like it’s like putting on a big circus.”
Among Savoy’s late-night creations are cakes, cupcakes and macarons galore, which she started selling about a year ago through her business, Savvy Sweets and Treats — a play on her last name.
Savoy is a self-taught baker. She started casually, baking for friends and coworkers throughout high school and college.
“There’s science behind it, there’s technical skills behind it, there’s creativity behind it, and then the flavor profiles, too,” Savoy said. “You get to kind of create unique and different flavors to see what works, what doesn’t work, and so it really brings a whole lot together.”
She really started to lean into it during the pandemic, scouring the internet to study the technicalities of baking. Savoy said she’s learned the right way to cream butter — it’s like an avocado, she added, where the line between not yet ripe versus overdone is slim — and how to alter her recipes and storage based on the weather. Summertime humidity, for example, is a macaron’s worst enemy, she said.
At the beginning, she’d pipe frosting along a large kitchen island to practice cake decorating.
“Google and YouTube were my best friends. It really was just watching people do techniques and piping,” she said. “It really becomes repetition … The more you do it, the better, the more confident you are in your piping techniques.”
She’s now fine-tuned that art, crafting picture-perfect products like a decadent Oreo cake with cream cheese buttercream or a “once upon a time” themed smash cake adorned with pink frosting, bows and a dainty gold crown on top.
She began toying with the idea of starting a business in 2024 but was already baking for events at her corporate job at the time. When she left that job — she now works as a management analyst for the state — she thought, “Oh no, who’s gonna buy all my baked goods?”
Rolling dough and beating frosting outside of her day job can get hectic, she said, and she tries to keep her nine-to-five and her baking endeavors separate. It takes intentional effort to give 100% of herself to both endeavors, but she enjoys how different they are.
“I hope that one day I don’t have to juggle it and then one can override the other,” Savoy said, “but it’s nice to be in business and it’s nice to use one set of skills, and I think baking has always just been a nice outlet for me.”
Savoy brings goodies to the Concord Farmers Market each week and holds pop-ups with local businesses in addition to accepting online orders. On April 9, she’ll host a Disney trivia night in conjunction with Wine on Main, where guests can compete while tasting four cupcakes and four wine pairings.
Savoy said she loves the combination of technical skill and creativity involved in baking, not to mention the instant gratification of making a finished product.
Then, there’s the smiles she gets to see as people bite into one of her macarons — the delicate, flaky shell giving way to a decadent creamy center.
“I love when people try it and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the best macaron I’ve ever had,'” Savoy said. “It’s so nice to give people that little burst of joy.”