Bee Sting Cake (Bienenstich)
One of the delectable treats customers might find during the weekly Perk Up kaffeeklatsch is a traditional German Bee Sting Cake, a sweet, yeasted delicacy with vanilla cream filling crusted with hone...
ARTISAN
Together They Rise: Perk Up Café
Owners produce breads and pastries with a German flavor
For Perk Up Café co-owners Jeanette Footman (a native of Berlin, Germany) and Alice Matsuo (of Brazilian- Japanese heritage), a beloved German tradition wasn’t just a way to make new friends. It also led to a successful business partnership.
A self-taught baker, Jeanette moved to Indianapolis with her Hoosier husband in 1995. Unable to find the authentic pastries of her homeland in her new hometown, she launched her own baking business, selling her products through farmers markets and other local outlets. Perk Up Café became a customer, giving Jeanette the opportunity to showcase her wares during kaffeeklatsch events each Sunday afternoon.
“Kaffeeklatsch is a German word that means getting together with friends and gossiping over coffee,” she explains. “Many of the people who attend are German, but our overall team, our baristas and our customers are a very diverse group.”
By the time Alice moved to Indianapolis from Wuppertal, Germany, with her husband in 2008, she was familiar with the kaffeeklatsch concept, and looked forward to checking out the one she heard about in Broad Ripple. Meeting Jeanette seemed almost predestined. The women hit it off immediately and decided to join professional forces when Jeanette discovered that Alice (a chemist by trade) is a certified German artisan baker, having completed an intensive three-year apprenticeship after falling in love with German breads while living in Wuppertal.
“We had to educate customers about what artisan bread was, and explain that it was actually healthy for them,” Alice recalls. “Most people at that time were only familiar with the mass-produced, pre-sliced, pre-packaged bread they bought at the supermarket.”
“German people eat more bread than any other country in the world,” Jeanette adds. “There are a lot of Germans who move here and want good, dense German bread; we get a lot of orders for our 100% wholegrain loaves.
TAKING OWNERSHIP
Jeanette and Alice took ownership of Perk Up 10 years ago, churning out small batches of baguettes, other breads, cheesecakes, muffins and pastries from the café’s tiny commercial kitchen for the café, farmers markets, special orders and a booth at the annual Christkindlmarkt in Carmel.
“Sometimes we surprise ourselves with what we’re able to produce,” Alice says. “In the beginning, we would bake constantly, starting at 2 a.m. and working overnight. Now, we start Friday evening for our farmers market supply and we also bake for the shop several days a week.”
“It’s a lot of moving around in a small space,” Jeanette says.
Both Alice and Jeanette name German bread rolls (broetchen) as one of their favorite items to make. Although the ingredients are fairly simple and the recipe isn’t hard to follow, unpredictable factors can affect the baking process, making it difficult to achieve a perfect result.
“So much depends on the room temperature, the daily humidity and other outside influences,” Alice explains. “When the rolls come out of the oven and start to cool, we say they’re ‘singing’ as the surfaces cracks a bit. When we get them right, that’s when we’re the happiest.”
To complement the breads and pastries, Perk Up employs a manually operated Victoria Arduino espresso machine for coffee drinks created from fair-trade, organic beans roasted in house.
“There are no buttons and no automation,” Jeanette says. “The measuring, the tamping and pulling the lever by hand all affect the quality of the espresso. It makes a big difference and depends totally on the skill of the barista. It’s something our Italian customers really appreciate.”
Owners Jeanette and Alice share the famous German Bee Sting Cake here.
PERK UP CAFÉ
6536 Cornell Ave.
317.251.0033
PerkUpIndy.com
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