Kentucky’s sweetest spot? Sugar cookies put this tiny bakery on the map.

Before Lana Root opened Root-A-Bakers Bakery and Cafe, people close to her benefited from her love of baking .... especially on special occasions.

“That was just something I liked to do so I would find out when everybody’s birthdays in the office is and was like, ‘I’ll do the cake. I’ll do the cake,’ ” Root said.

During her time as a wife and mother of three and in her spare time away from working at jobs ranging from a dental assistant to a pharmacy technician, Root taught herself to bake and was always told she should have her own bakery based on the results.

Twenty years later, Root-A-Bakers has not only become a staple of her hometown of Morehead, its reputation for incredible sweet treats has built a regional following and received a bit of unexpected recognition.

The original Root-A-Bakers started in what Root described as a “little bitty building” with a small staff of six or seven on Flemingsburg Road and helped supply baked goods to nearby Fuzzy Duck Coffee Shop, creating early favorites like cinnamon rolls, sticky buns, chicken salad and its signature sugar cookies.

As the bakery’s popularity grew, their small space needed to grow with it. In 2004, they moved to its current location, a two-story model house located up the street at 313 Flemingsburg Road.

Root-A-Bakers now offers everything from sweet and savory scones, cupcakes and full-size cakes and a lunch menu containing a variety of sandwiches and salads.

But the bakery is known for its sugar cookies. Whether rolled out or scooped, which Root said gives the cookies a more moist texture, each cookie is topped with a signature buttercream icing and always made with real butter.

The first cookie is always free.

“With those sugar cookies, you taste that butter when you bite into it,” Root said. “That’s why we give it away because if they taste it, they’re going to buy them. That’s proven to be true.”

According to Root, Root-A-Bakers usually sells around 30 dozen sugar cookies per day, which goes up to 90 dozen during the holidays. And many of these customers are starting to come from elsewhere.

“We started noticing that about five years ago,” she said. “We would go out there and look and there wasn’t one car from Rowan County out there.”

In addition to gaining more of a regional following, fans of the restaurant came together to vote Root-A-Bakers as the Sweetest Bakery in Kentucky for 2019 through a social media contest hosted by Dawn Food Products in search of the Sweetest Bakery in America.

While the coronavirus pandemic continues to affect the bakery’s business model, resulting in them exclusively curbside pick-up due to the location’s limited seating, Root said she feels fortunate that business has continued to hold steady thanks to its loyal following. Eventually, she is looking forward to the time she can welcome customers back to dine-in service and she can revel in comments guests leave in the journals sitting at each table.

“They just say they love the family atmosphere. It feels like home,” she said. “We try to make it very welcoming for people to feel relaxed and feel at home in our place. I think it’s the whole package deal. It’s not just this, it’s not just that. It’s everything.”

Root-A-Bakers Bakery and Cafe

Where: 313 Flemingsburg Road, Morehead

Hours: Currently open for curbside pick-up, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday

Online: Root-a-bakers.com

Call: 606-780-4282

This story was originally published July 22, 2020 at 6:00 AM.