Inside the Fort Lee Farmers Market: Mortgage Apple Cakes

In 2009, Angela Logan was just a single mother living in Teaneck, working to support her family and going to school to become a nurse. She was also in the process of losing her house.

Although Angela had lived in her Teaneck house for 20 years, a series of factors led her to where she now found herself: her savings had been drained by having been horribly overcharged for work that she had done on her house, and to make matters worse, the talent agency she worked for went under owing her thousands in back pay.

The mortgage company demanded she come up with $2,500 within a very short period of time or they would foreclose. Determined to save her house and keep the home she had made for her children, Angela did the only thing she could think of—she called upon the kindness of her friends.

Angela, a gifted baker, known for her delicious apple cakes, decided to use that talent to bake 100 cakes in 10 days, asking her friends to buy her cakes for $40 each in order to meet the bank’s demands. Within one week Angela had sold 42 cakes. That’s when an obituary writer from one of the area papers heard about what Angela was doing and decided to report her story.

That little story was heard ‘round world as every national media outlet picked it up and came rushing to Angela’s house to interview her, knowing that in these tough economic times, her story would resonate with their audiences.

It did.  

All that media exposure resulted in an explosion of sales. Suddenly, Angela began to sell “hundreds and hundreds” of cakes.

Enter the Teaneck Department of Health, which someone had called to report that Angela was baking and selling cakes from her kitchen. The Department of Health instructed Angela that she could not operate a commercial business from her kitchen and needed to stop immediately.

Angela’s story could have ended here, but it didn’t.

In fact it’s at this point that it really begins. Hearing about her situation, the Hilton Hotel in Hasbrouck Heights allowed Angela to use their kitchen to bake her cakes, and Zoe’s Cupcake Café  in Teaneck agreed to distribute her cakes for her. Then, as if these acts of kindness weren’t enough, Bake Me A Wish, a not-for-profit bakery that sells baked goods for charitable causes, came into Angela’s life and began to bake and distribute her cakes for her all over the U.S.

So from adversity, a business was born; a business that continues to grow every day. Still, Angela remains local at heart. Her cakes are available for purchase through her own website Mortgage Apple Cakes with a portion of her sales going to help other people in need.

In addition to being a presence at Fort Lee’s Farmers Market every Sunday throughh October, and the Teaneck Farmers Market every Thursday, Angela can also be found traveling the circuit of other Bergen County Farmers Markets as well. Click here to see her Farmers Market Schedule.

Angela’s cakes are also carried by Classic Quiche and Zoe’s Cupcake Café in Teaneck, Mani’s Market Place on the Upper West Side in NYC and Just D’sserts by Sparkle in Elmood Park.

Through her sheer determination not to fail and the creativity it sparked, Angela has inspired so many people to believe that they, too, can accomplish anything, but those most inspired by her are her own sons. Her younger son, Nicholas, told Patch that he is continually inspired by his mother’s ability to seemingly pick a solution out of her hat whenever a problem arises.  

So now that you know a little more about one of the people who come to our Farmers Market to offer us a taste of the homemade, won’t you come out and support Angela and all the other talented people under the tents of our own Fort Lee Farmers Market? Because beneath every tent and behind every table, there’s a story.

Next week we’ll introduce you to another vendor and share their story with you. Get out the tissues, it's a love story that will warm your heart. 

If you visited the Farmers’ Market this weekend, comment or drop us a line and let your Patch neighbors know how you liked it.