https://mackays-bakery.myshopify.com/

MacKay’s Bakery, Pickering, ON (2026)

05/30/2026

📸 LEMON SQUARE COOKIE PUCK

Hey Sugar, broadcasting live from the Pink Floral Teacup.

A little story about the name, because we get asked this one often.

MacKay’s Bakery, pronounced /mækˈkaɪ/, is named after my grandmother’s family line, the MacKays, a Scottish Highland family name with roots stretching back through Sutherland before eventually making its way to Canada generations later.

Family lineage sits at the forefront of almost everything we do here. The bakery wasn’t built just around desserts, but rather around inheritance in the most meaningful sense of the word: recipes passed between women, handwritten cards tucked into kitchen drawers and the memory of what someone always brought to Christmas gatherings.

Our family history carries some remarkable stories, and those stories lived around me long before the business ever existed. Even our logo carries that history. It was inspired by a postal stamp from a WWII letter home written by my grandfather while serving as a supply pilot during the war.

Something about that small, worn stamp stayed with me: a reminder that care has always travelled through ordinary things. So while nostalgic desserts may be becoming trendy again culturally, they have never been a trend to us, they have always been the heartbeat of this bakery.

Underneath the charming pink, MacKay’s has always really been about remembering where you came from and carrying it forward lovingly within your community.

05/25/2026

Hey Sugar, reporting live from the Pink Floral Teacup.

Lately, everyone has been talking about the dot cake trend like it just appeared, but the truth is these cakes are rooted in desserts many of us have loved for decades. The internet rediscovered them because whimsically re-imagined them in a beautifully innovative form.

Those colourful little nonpareils instantly bring people back to childhood. They remind people of sheet cakes on folding tables, birthday parties with paper plates and candles, grocery store bakery boxes carried carefully into classrooms, and the simple joy of desserts made to celebrate people you love.

Birthday cake and our own take on rainbow bit frosting has been part of my creative world since the early days of the bakery, long before social media turned nostalgic desserts into a viral aesthetic. To me, those bright rainbow dots have never been about trends. They represent happiness, celebration, abundance, creativity, and the kind of sweets people instinctively connect to memory and comfort.

What fascinates me most is that we are living through this larger cultural return to maximalist nostalgia. After years of minimalist aesthetics and perfectly curated beige everything, people suddenly seem to want colour again. They want joy, excess and desserts that feel playful and unapologetically celebratory.

So watching the world suddenly fall back in love with rainbow dots, over the top cakes, and desserts that feel tied to childhood memories has honestly felt really special. In this house, nostalgia has never been something we chased because it was popular online. It has always been woven into everything we create. From handwritten family recipes and church cookbook inspiration to heritage desserts, old fashioned grocery store cakes, and birthday party classics.

When the viral trend of nostalgia is quite literally your entire personality and business, moments like this feel a little bit like gold. 🌈🪣

05/19/2026

📸 Nanaimo Bar Cookie Puck

Hey Sugar! Broadcasting live from the Pink Floral Teacup. 🫖

It has been a little while since I shared a life update that didn’t involve viral buckets or all things sugar, so here we are.

We will be taking a small holiday pause beginning tomorrow through May 26. It's certainly not because I would ever willingly take a single day off... you know me better than that by now. I would happily stay up all night and wake before the sunrise just to keep baking for you if I could.

But this week, I need a little reset.
If you’ve been here for a while, you know that since last August I’ve been navigating some health challenges that are a little tricky to manage. This week, I'm beginning a new treatment, and I need to give my body the time and space to adjust.

The last few months have been exciting, overwhelming, joyful, exhausting, and deeply humbling all at once. This little bakery has grown in ways we never expected, and we are endlessly grateful for every order, message, visit, and kind word. We also know we need a brief pause to regroup and make sure we are building things sustainably moving forward.

So this week will be spent resting, reorganizing, reordering supplies, and planning carefully for what comes next. We are actively working on ways to expand offerings, increase production, and make this next season of MacKay’s Bakery even sweeter so that we come back with a fresh menu, fresh ideas, and full hearts.

We’ll be back on May 27 and before anyone panics, yes, I promise, promise, promise… Caramel Carrot Cake is staying on the menu for good.

05/10/2026

📸 Chocolate Caramel Brownie Cake Bucket

I think one of the biggest signs that your mom is also your best friend is realizing you never really get tired of being around her.

It’s kind of funny in our case because we live on the same street and see each other almost every single day. If a day passes where I do not see her, it feels unusual somehow, like the rhythm of the day got thrown off a little. Even years ago, I still always wanted to stop by my parents’ house, and now somehow I want to see them even more.

I know some people would probably hear that and immediately joke about codependence, but I don’t think that is what this is at all. I think I simply grew up genuinely liking my mother as a person.

I love talking to her, I love spending time with her and I love the perspective and outlook she carries. She has always been the person I call first, the person I tell everything to, and the person who somehow understands what I mean even when I am explaining something badly while simultaneously trying to manage a toddler climbing across my lap.

There is something deeply comforting about being understood by someone who has known you your entire life.

My mom had me at 26, which feels wild to me now because I had Tessa at 39. I think that age difference shaped our relationship in ways I did not fully appreciate until I became a mother myself. She was always my mom, but she was also somebody I genuinely wanted to be like. We could spend entire days together doing completely ordinary things and still laugh the whole time. Running errands with her somehow still feels comforting in the same way it did when I was little.

I think Mother’s Day starts to feel different as you get older. It becomes less about one Sunday in May and more about realizing who stood beside you through every version of yourself you have ever been.

I got incredibly lucky with her.

She is my mom, she is my best friend, and I do not think a single day goes by where I am not grateful that those two things became the very same person.

05/08/2026

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙱𝚞𝚌𝚔𝚎𝚝 𝙳𝚛𝚘𝚙

• Every Thursday evening at 7:00 PM sharp, Cake & Cheesecake Bucket orders open on our website for the upcoming weekend and week, all at once.

• Old fashioned style, like when you knew the bakery window would fill just before supper.

• Mark your calendar so you do not miss out.

• Visit www.mackaysbakery.com and place your order for our exclusive Cake & Cheesecake Buckets. Each bucket is layered, filled, and prepared by hand into our eco friendly reusable buckets, with genuine care, making every dessert a little unique each time.

• You will receive an email once your order has been confirmed, along with another email the day before your selected pickup date containing pickup instructions.

• Pickup is available in Pickering only. We do not currently offer shipping or delivery.

• Please add your preferred pickup date in the Notes section at checkout so we can prepare your bucket for your chosen day.

• If no pickup date is specified, your order will automatically be scheduled for the first pickup day listed on our website.

• Extra Buckets may appear on the website throughout the week whenever we have spare baking capacity. From time to time, a few may also find their way into our honour system fridge for spontaneous sweet cravings or gifting surprises on a first come, first served basis.

Every week we convince ourselves we have made enough buckets, which has comically become the bakery version of tempting fate. Somewhere along the way, all of you managed to fill our buckets right back, in every sense of the phrase.

We are deeply grateful for your enthusiasm and kindness. Your support means more to our family than we could properly put into words, and every week we look forward to baking for you all over again.

We hope you will join us for the next Bucket Drop and become part of our growing little community, one handmade Bucket at a time.

05/04/2026

There’s a moment I treasure in any car ride, when the radio dial gets turned up, and we’re into a part of the song where lyrics pulse with raw emotion. This is the “rant bridge”: a section where an artist lays their soul bare, unleashing unfiltered truth with intensity and vulnerability. It’s not just a musical passage; it’s an emotional release, a confessional where everything comes out at once. So, in the spirit of that musical honesty, here’s my own “rant bridge”.

Like my Mom, my childhood was soft, thoughtful, and remarkably clear. At home, meaningful conversations were valued, and dreaming was part of daily life. I learned that everyone's story mattered, and our kitchen table became a space to listen, share, and nurture dreams. Praise in our house wasn’t just tossed around like confetti—it came with context, perspective, and humility.

My Dad spoke daily affirmations to me, a refrain that still echoes: “Every day, in every way, you are getting better and better.” This wasn’t just encouragement, it taught me to check in with myself, to weigh the good and the tough, to see how both sides add up to growth. Self-worth was built like compounding interest that grows over years.

My parents are still here, literally and physically, ready with oven mitts or an extra set of hands for my toddler. Their loyalty is durable; something I’ve leaned on through every setback and celebration, never once wavering.

I see these lessons now reflected in my own home. My husband and my toddler are with me through every moment. Our beliefs are simple: joy doesn’t require milestones, nothing is too sticky to sort through, and love resonates brighter the more freely it’s given. We keep the conversation going, just as my parents did, and let everyday kindness anchor our family.

So, when people ask how I’m managing—especially during my serious health battles—the truth is that it’s not just dazzling discipline or personal grit, it’s the presence of everyone around me. They are my foundation, my buffer against uncertainty, and the best kind of backup plan. Their support lifts me, lets me keep reaching, and reminds me that vulnerability shared is what makes us strong.

04/27/2026

📽️Chips & Dip

Friday nights were chippies and pop.

I grew up on this street, and now I am raising my family here too. My best friend lived next door, and her family was a family of seven, which meant treats were never casual, they were planned. Every Friday, they were given a small handful of chips, a little dip, and a bit of pop poured carefully so if there were spills, they were not too crazy. It was simple, but it felt like an exciting end of the week treat. That was what she grew up in.

My home looked different. I was an only child, and my parents believed in moderation with access. Nothing was restricted, and everything had its place. I learned how to choose, and I was trusted to do it well. That was what I grew up in.

Desserts have always held a special place in my heart, but watching their family enjoy them made that feeling even deeper. There was something about seeing how one small treat could make a night feel magical and give them all something to look forward to that really stuck with me.

My daughter is about the age I was when I spent my days running next door, playing in their backyard and ending up in their kitchen more often than not. There is something about that age, and those memories, that stays with you.

So we gave them a dessert turn. I took my mom’s favourite kettle cooked chips, dipped them in cookie butter, tossed them through, and finished them with a few of our own special touches. The dip in the centre is my grandma’s vintage chocolate frosting. Warm it slightly, and it becomes something else entirely.

My daughter loves chippies and dip too, the original kind and the sweet kind. She has access to everything, her mom owns a bakery, after all, so she has learned. She took two chips, ate them slowly, and said, “That’s plenty, thank you.”

Though I suspect this might become a trend, it was never meant to be anything more than something I made because it felt like home, and like my oldest friend.

04/27/2026

I Just Own a Bakery

For years, I carried an uneasy feeling that my work did not fit the expectations set by others. I questioned whether my contributions mattered, and whether it was “too much” to want them recognized in full. We are often nudged socially and psychologically to reshape what we do so it fits systems never designed to acknowledge its scope. The language we repeat becomes a kind of architecture: it builds a reality where certain labour is treated as smaller than it is. I hear that pattern in my own voice and in the voices of other women. There is, in truth, nothing “just” about any of it.

I used to say, easily and automatically, “I just own a bakery,” when the truth is I am building a business. That single word works like an eraser. It shrinks complexity into something more comfortable for other people to understand. “Just” is not harmless; it is a small permission slip for others to underestimate us.

Words carry power. When we soften our ambitions with qualifiers, we reframe something intricate and demanding into something falsely simple. We make the labour, the risk, and the responsibility sound lighter than they are, even when every piece deserves respect.

There is nothing modest about building something from scratch without a guide. The responsibility is constant and the decisions, expenses, outcomes, and mistakes... each land in your hands. It is not light work to learn bookkeeping, taxes, bylaws, food regulations, insurance, marketing, branding, and the constant churn of content: writing, filming, editing, communicating. It is not simple to source ingredients, manage inventory, price products, design labels, understand allergens, build systems, and make sure everything runs safely and steadily. And the work does not pause because life is full: a child to raise, a home to manage, a body that still needs rest.

“I just” is not humility. It is conditioning that teaches women to compress their achievements to suit structures that were never built to accommodate them. I hear it echoed in introduction after introduction in these fields; I'd say its is time to reconsider how we define and describe our work.

04/27/2026

📸 Strawberry Shortcake Cake Bucket

The 1950s Housewife Deserves Better Than a Punchline.

There was a moment in graduate school, sitting in seminar rooms built around the language of social justice, criminology, and forensic psychology, where I was told, more than once and without hesitation, that my baking was a problem.

It was framed as an issue of ideology and delivered in a way that suggested it carried a broader social consequence, as though something as ordinary and deliberate as choosing to bake could be positioned as a step in the wrong direction. I was told plainly, that by choosing to bake, I was contributing to the oppression of women, and that I was, in some quiet and domestic way, pulling us backward toward the image of the 1950s housewife.

I remember sitting there with a stark clarity that cut through everything else, recognizing that choosing what to do with my own time, my own skill, and my own hands, as a woman, had been positioned as a problem in itself.

At some point, the phrase “1950s housewife” became something spoken with thinly veiled contempt, as though it represented something less than or unserious.

Every time it is used that way, it does not advance anything. It diminishes an entire category of labour that has always been real, always been demanding, and almost always been rendered invisible. There is nothing easy about running a home, raising children, carrying the full mental load of administration, meals, schedules, cleaning, planning, and the constant responsibility that does not pause or clock out.

Yet, so often, it still continues to be used as shorthand for failure, for regression, for something we imagine we have 'outgrown'. In the effort to reject one version of expectation, another has been subtly devalued, and in doing so, meaning and dignity have been stripped from work that has always held entire lives together behind the scenes.

As I build a brand and a legacy of entrepreneurship, those same comments do not disappear. They follow, they linger, and they continue to reveal exactly how much more needs to change in what we value.

MacKay’s Bakery

05/30/2026

05/25/2026

05/19/2026

05/10/2026

05/08/2026

05/04/2026

04/27/2026

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04/27/2026

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