Whisk: a Sustainable Bakeshop

Whisk began in 2011 as Farm Fresh Cupcakes, a market stall run by Kaylen Wissinger, who had noticed how good the produce coming into St. Louis was and decided to bake with it. The cupcakes went to the Tower Grove Farmers’ Market in flavours that followed the growing season – strawberry rhubarb, zucchini spice, sweet potato, purple velvet. They sold well enough that in the spring of 2012 she signed a lease on the storefront at 2201 Cherokee Street, and Whisk opened on 10 November 2012 to crowds that emptied the cases.

The word sustainable in the name is meant literally, and it shows in the sourcing more than on the menu board. Eggs come from Blind Star Farms, milk from Rolling Lawns, produce from Eat Here St. Louis and from the same Tower Grove market where the business began. Even the nuts are local: pecans and black walnuts from Missouri rather than from a national supplier. Organic waste is composted, and what leaves the shop leaves in packaging that can be composted too – cups, straws, popsicle wrappers and to-go materials. The coffee is Fair Trade.

The case runs to cakes, cupcakes, cookies, bars and frozen treats in summer, and a good share of it is vegan or gluten free rather than the single token option tacked on at the end. That has earned Whisk a following among people who are used to being handed a fruit plate, and it did so without treating those bakes as a separate, lesser menu – they sit in the same case as everything else.

Beyond the storefront, Whisk keeps a stall at the Tower Grove Farmers’ Market from May to November and turns up at events around the city, which is how a good many St. Louisans met it first. It is a member of the Green Dining Alliance, the local certification scheme for restaurants working on waste, water and energy.

The shop stands on the north side of Cherokee Street among the antique and vintage dealers of the Row, at the corner where the antiques end of the street begins to give way to its food and arts end.