Food Network said this Frankfort bakery has some of the cutest food in the country
Should you find yourself in Frankfort when the urge for something homemade and sweet strikes, hightail it over to 241 W. Main St. where the cute bakery on the corner beckons. If you think the outside is cute, wait until you see what’s inside.
Pink flamingo donuts, mini cookies atop elaborately iced cupcakes and petit-fours sporting tiny gingerbread men – all so impossibly cute that B’s Bakery was selected by the Food Network as one of the 10 bakeries in the United States serving the cutest food.
“We were included with bakeries in New York City and Las Vegas,” says Beth Carter, the eponymous B. “It was so cool to see our little Frankfort bakery shining brightly among the greats.”
While you won’t find pink flamingos or dancing gingerbread men all the time, you can find equally “cute” and delicious items throughout the year.
“We make our donuts from scratch every day along with our cakes and cookies,” says Carter, adding that she did some research and discovered she has the “largest cookie jar bar in the state, with some 20 varieties of cookies.
“The only thing we don’t do from scratch is macaroons,” she adds.
The bakery items may be exceptional enough to have attracted the notice of the Food Network, but no more exceptional than Carter herself, who opened the dessert shop bakery in 2016 to instant acclaim after a long and colorful career as a chef and caterer to the jet set.
Her journey began in Frankfort where she moved at age three when her father, Dick Greenwell, accepted a job as Executive Director for Human Resources in Gov. Louie Nunn’s administration. She graduated from school there, married and spent the next 20 years raising her two children. It was only after a divorce that she began to think about the next chapter in her story. What a chapter it proved to be.
In 2010, as a forty-something, she was accepted into the prestigious International Culinary Arts & Sciences Institute in Cleveland, Ohio. As the only woman in her class, Carter says she had to “kick harder and scream louder” to be heard in the macho chorus.
Her kicking and screaming paid off, as the founder of the school offered her an externship for a summer in Italy where she would pursue her passion while living in a 12th century castle. While there, she got a call from Vanessa Weikert, a renowned German caterer. It was the call that launched a thousand cakes.
Weikert catered for the owners and teams of Le Mans, the world’s oldest active sports car race, known as “the Grand Prix of Endurance Racing.” Three days after leaving Italy, Carter was in Wisconsin on the catering team for the American Le Mans series. She stayed with Weikert for seven years, catering in America and Europe.
Through her connections with Le Mans, Carter began to receive high profile catering gigs such as the one for Taylor Swift’s 1989 World Tour in 2015.
Now, while it may seem as if Swift’s diet consists of celery stalks and cottage cheese, the charcuterie and dessert boards Carter delivered to her dressing room proved irresistible to the pop diva.
Carter departed the realm of the “Swifties” when she left the tour to enroll her daughter Madeleine in college (Madeleine is now a news anchor for KNDU in Washington State’s Tri-Cities and her son Drew is a journalist in Spain.)
Far from fading into obscurity, however, Carter went on to what she calls “the big feather in my culinary cap” when she was recommended for the job of set caterer on the iconic Food Channel Network program The Pioneer Woman.
“I loved working with Ree (Drummond),” says Carter. “She’s just so real and has a unique approach to food.
“As her fans know, she lives on a remote cattle ranch in Oklahoma miles from anywhere. We had to drive through the Indian reservation to get to Tulsa to shop.”
What did she take away from this experience?”
“I learned how keen my international culinary skills were (the crew was from England) and I gained a lot of confidence knowing I could cook for an award-winning crew on a syndicated cooking show,” says Carter.
She remained with the Pioneer Woman for two years, but as Carter says, she was already hearing the siren call of her old Kentucky home.
“I just felt Frankfort was ready for a home-town bakery,” she says.
Were they ever? B’s was a hit from the start, and Carter, running the bakery as well as a catering business, Fork, Knife and Spoon, and an event venue, The Elizabeth, had reason to believe it would be smooth sailing from here on. But like everyone else, she didn’t foresee a global pandemic which would change the world landscape.
“We had to come up with a creative way to make it through the pandemic,” says Carter, “so we came up with the idea of themed donuts and themed treat boxes. We changed our menu each week based on a particular theme.”
For example, playing off the popularity of the Netflix reality show “Tiger King,” B’s treat box featured tiger-striped cakes and cookies and safari themed “do-it-yourself” cookie kits. Equally popular were the lunchbox snack theme, a tribute to school days nostalgia, and the toilet paper theme.
“We made little iced toilet paper rolls that went on top of cupcakes,” she says, “people loved those.”
The biggest seller, however. has been her “I’m Thinking of You” box which comes with a cream horn, two mini-cupcakes and a Long John, similar to an éclair.
“People started ordering them by the dozens to give to first responders, shut-ins and loved ones they haven’t been able to see,” she says, “we could hardly keep up with the orders.”
These days, Carter and her staff have a lot more to keep up with. Pre-COVID, she was already operating three businesses. But during the pandemic, she discovered she was suffering from diabetes and had to alter her lifestyle.
That resulted in her newest venture, Greens & Grains by B. Partnering with U.S. Foods, she has recently launched a delivery service of healthy foods such as homemade chicken salad and pimento salad, soups, bowls and gluten-free cookies.
“We deliver throughout Frankfort, but everyone else can pick up their order curbside at the Elizabeth, our historic building on Wapping Street,” says Carter.
Carter’s dazzling career arc has led her from a 12th century Italian castle to Le Mans races and cooking for celebrities to the chatelaine of one of the “cutest” bakeries in the United States.
B’s Bakery
Where: 241 W. Main St., Frankfort
Hours: 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Thur-Sat., closed Sun.-Wed.
Contact: 502-699-2222; facebook.com/Bs-Bakery-1058041744289193
This story was originally published December 1, 2020 at 6:00 AM.