Holiday season is a time for being with family, friends, and devouring homemade baked goods.
For senior Catherine Bell and sophomore Breanna Bell the holidays are not only filled with family and friends but also with cheesecakes. The Bell sisters were dubbed the “family bakers” when their oldest sister passed the tradition down to them.
The original Bell family holiday baking began back in 1997 when the Bell’s oldest sister Danielle attended Central Junior High School. She wanted to bake the school janitor a cheesecake and the results were more than rewarding.
“The janitor [told Danielle], ‘That was really good. You should really think about selling these,’ ” Catherine said. “So my mom and my sister tweaked the recipe to where they thought it was pretty good and people liked it, so we just kept it.”
Once the young Bell sisters came to LHS, people constantly asked if they were “the cheesecake ladies.”
“We were like, ‘OK. Yeah, I guess we should keep it going,’ ” Catherine said.
Chaos begins when the holiday season hits. Just like other students, they have finals to study for, projects to complete and homework that needs to be finished. But unlike everyone else they have an average of 60 cheesecakes to bake and deliver.
“We basically communicate with each other and figure out a schedule before we do anything,” Breanna said.
One loyal customer, math teacher Matt Ellis, said Catherine approached him to buy a cheesecake when she was getting math help from him.
“She came by and offered it so I thought ‘Why not,’” Ellis said. “You know, it sounded like a good deal.”
Luckily for the Bells, delivering isn’t too hard; most customers are teachers here at the high school.
“We pretty much sell to almost every teacher every holiday,” Catherine said.
The homemade cheesecakes are all nine inches, ranging from $10 to $25, with flavors including blueberry, cherry and strawberry. But the Bells do take special requests.
“People suggest [flavors], and we try it out on the family because there’s 11 of us,” Catherine said.
The Bell sisters make sure to have samples for first-time buyers and when experimenting with new flavors.
“[We give them samples] mostly for feedback,” Breanna said. “[And] because they don’t know what our cheesecake tastes like.”
Catherine and Breanna are not alone in their cheesecake business efforts. The whole Bell family works as a team to bake them and help ship them off to the customers. Catherine and Breanna are in charge of mixing the main part of the cheesecake, their younger siblings crush the graham crackers, their dad and brothers assist the distribution, and their mother keeps track of inventory.
“Because there’s so many of us in our family we’re cool with each other,” Catherine said.
The hard work baked into the holidays pays off in the end.
“The cheesecakes are pretty tasty,” Ellis said. “It just reminds me [of if] I would have made it myself, but it’s better than what I can make, it’s just an exceptional taste.”