Soon after Ashley McMakin opened her first Ashley Mac’s market and bakery in suburban Birmingham, she introduced a sweet new treat to the menu that would fast become her signature dessert.
And the inspiration was McMakin’s mom, Sandy Deaton, who had perfected a strawberry cake recipe that she made for her youngest son Tyler’s birthday.
“Every year, (Tyler) said, ‘I want my strawberry cake,’” Deaton recalls. “He’s 35, and he still wants a strawberry cake.”
So, with a little encouragement from her mom, McMakin started developing a strawberry cake recipe of her own for her Ashley Mac’s customers.
“You know, this strawberry cake is really good,” Deaton remembers telling her daughter. “You ought to try this.”
Not that McMakin needed convincing. She loved her mother’s cake, too.
“Oh, man,” she says, “it was like the best cake.”
The strawberry cake is one of the stars of the menu at Ashley Mac's Kitchen.(Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
McMakin spent a few months in the kitchen tweaking her mom’s recipe to make it more retail-friendly, and, just as her mom had predicted, the strawberry cake become one of the stars of the menu.
“We started selling it,” McMakin says, “and it’s been our biggest seller ever since.”
From that first storefront McMakin and her husband, Andy McMakin, opened in Hoover’s Bluff Park neighborhood in 2007, the Ashley Mac’s Kitchen brand has grown to now include five cafes and markets around the Birmingham metro area.
And that strawberry cake -- along with McMakin’s chicken salad, pimento cheese and grab-and-go casseroles -- has played a major role in their success.
A rich, moist, four-layer beauty blanketed in a cream cheese icing flecked with fresh strawberries, it is available as a whole cake, by the slice or as mini-cupcakes at all five Ashley Mac’s Kitchen locations.
More stories behind famous Alabama foods
McMakin credits beloved Birmingham News food writer Jo Ellen O’Hara for first getting the word out about what would become her best-selling cake. In 2008, O’Hara featured the strawberry cake on the front page of The News’ Wednesday food section.
McMakin framed the story and has it on display at some of her stores.
“That (story) really kind of launched the strawberry cake,” she says. “I remember when that came out, we just started getting a lot more traffic and phone calls and people asking about the cake.
“It’s still one of our most well-known (dishes), probably our most well- known -- that and the chicken salad.”
Ashley McMakin, left, and her mother, Sandy Deaton, are pictured here after McMakin won an Alabama Retail Association's Gold Award as Alabama Retailer of the Year in 2022.(Photo courtesy of Ashley McMakin; used with permission)
McMakin includes the strawberry cake recipe in her new “Ashley Mac’s Kitchen” cookbook, which came out last fall and is available online and at all her cafes.
The key ingredient, McMakin says, is fresh, not frozen, strawberries. During Alabama’s peak strawberry season from March to May, she buys her berries from local growers, she says. Out of season, she uses Florida and California strawberries.
Although it is available year-round, the strawberry cake is especially popular around Valentine’s Day and Easter -- as well as on anniversaries and birthdays.
“We actually have a lot of male customers and even young boys,” McMakin says. (Their mothers) say, ‘He said he doesn’t care if it’s pink; that’s what he wants for his birthday.’ I get that comment a lot.”
Just like Tyler Deaton, who still wants a strawberry cake on his birthday.
And he doesn’t care whether his mom or his big sister makes it. He loves them both.
“They’ve tweaked it slightly throughout the years, but it’s still basically the same,” he says. “So, yeah, I still like to have it.”
