Pastry Art Bake Shoppe

Pastry Art Bake Shoppe has operated in Homewood, Alabama for years, with a storefront on 29th Avenue South that locals simply call the Baby Bite bakery, after the small cake squares that made the shop’s name. Carol Gregg started baking as a hobby, working through what she has described as a fifteen year culinary journey before she and her husband, Dennis, decided to turn that hobby into a business. The bakery they opened in Homewood grew directly out of Carol’s home kitchen experiments rather than any formal pastry training, and that home baker origin still shapes how the shop describes itself.

The shop’s signature product is the Baby Bite, a petite cake square available in a rotating weekly lineup of flavors that has included Red Velvet, Caramel, Chocolate, Turtle, Vanilla, and Strawberry Margarita, along with seasonal options like Lemon and Key Lime depending on the time of year. Pastry Art trademarked the Baby Bite name and describes itself as the home of the original version, a detail that distinguishes it from the many bakeries around the country that have since copied the small square cake format.

Beyond the Baby Bites, the bakery handles full scratch made cakes for weddings and other events, along with cupcakes and other baked goods produced daily. The shop has built a reputation locally for wedding cake work in particular, with the Greggs positioning the bakery as a full service option for anyone planning a cake centered event rather than just a walk in counter for individual treats. That range, from a single Baby Bite to a full wedding order, has helped the shop stay relevant to a wide mix of customers over the years.

Pastry Art has expanded to a second location in Hoover, but the Homewood shop on 29th Avenue South remains the original, sitting on one of the short commercial blocks that make up Homewood’s historic central business district. The street itself is only a few blocks long, but it has held onto a cluster of longtime local businesses even as newer restaurants and shops have opened around it, and Pastry Art has been part of that mix for a long stretch of the street’s recent history.

What keeps Pastry Art distinct from newer bakeries in the area is the family ownership behind it and the specificity of the Baby Bite as a signature product rather than a generic cupcake or cookie. Carol and Dennis Gregg built the shop around freshness, quality, and friendliness, values the bakery still leans on in describing itself, and the weekly rotating flavor list keeps longtime customers checking back in even after years of visiting the same small storefront on 29th Avenue South.

The Baby Bite name itself has become something of a local shorthand, with regulars often referring to the shop by the product rather than its full name. That kind of brand recognition tends to build slowly, over years of the same small square cake showing up at office parties, school events, and family gatherings across the Birmingham suburbs, and Pastry Art’s trademark on the name reflects just how closely the two are now linked in customers’ minds.

Wedding cake work remains one of the bakery’s steadiest lines of business, with scratch made recipes that the shop describes as award winning, though the day to day rhythm of the storefront still revolves around the rotating weekly flavors sold by the piece. That balance between big custom orders and small daily purchases is part of what has kept the 29th Avenue South shop relevant across a long stretch of years, serving both a bride planning a wedding and a regular stopping in for a Tuesday afternoon treat.