Full Belly Bakery a popular new draw in Oakland’s Montclair Village

A young adult’s self-perception and career expectations are rarely 100% accurate.

This was especially true for Eva Allen, the owner and pastry chef at Oakland’s Full Belly Bakery who says she never really loved or dreamed of baking cakes and isn’t a huge fan of chocolate — the latter comment earning looks of complete disgust from the Montclair Village shop’s avid choco-holics. More evidence of “denial” of her career destiny came with a college degree in communications that Allen expected would lead to employment at an ad agency or in hotel sales.

“Eventually, I discovered I’m not a desk person,” she says. “I wanted to do things where I was moving. From when I was 2-and-a-half, I did gymnastics, skied in Tahoe, then did volleyball from high school through college. I’m an outside hitter and freakishly strong, even though I was short for volleyball at 5-8. I still play in a league.”

When not battling volleyballs, Allen today is whipping up batter and the not-too-sweet Italian meringue buttercream frosting she prefers. Having jumped out of the office chair to complete a diploma in professional pastry arts from the Boulder, Colorado-based Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts, she recently moved from popular pop-ups launched in 2017 to establish her brick-and-mortar shop this fall in Montclair Village.

There, the bakery offers a full panoply of cakes and a growing line of baked desserts and delectables. Featured on the menu are Allen’s signature cake jars, with cake and filings artfully layered in glass jars that are aesthetically pleasing and a practical means for delivery and shipping.

Several cake collections fall under the labels “Indulgence,” “Extravagance” and “Gratification.” Rounding out the offerings are cookies, bread loaves, scones, tarts, truffles, a savory onion and herb focaccia and seasonal specialty items like the sweet potato pie that arguably explains how Allen was destined to become a bakery entrepreneur.

“The running joke in my family comes from my grandmother, who used to make sweet potato pie for Thanksgiving every year. I’m an only child, and when we’d join family for the holiday, I loved it (her sweet potato pie) and my uncles loved it. We loved it so much we’d fight over it.

“My grandmother’s solution was to make four pies, so I would get my own pie, my uncles each got a pie and the rest of the family shared a fourth pie. She did it from when I was in fifth grade to when I began high school. I won’t say I no longer fought for it by then, but I was older and thought maybe one pie for a weekend is a lot.”

As a chef, Allen prefers bold flavors and creates baked goods that go beyond simply gorgeous to reach distinction in presentation and taste.

“When I travel, I eat desserts. Everywhere, I like to stop at at least three bakeries.

“Oftentimes, the flavor is something like lemon. It visually looks like a lemon bar, and I can taste the lemon. If I’m working with lemon, I want it to kick me off my feet. While the quality and technique are good, I think, ‘where’s the flavor?’ Or it’s gorgeous, but when you taste it, it’s only OK.”

She says the bakery’s ginger key lime cake is one example of her preference for bold flavors.

“The ginger is very forward. If you don’t like ginger, I say don’t do it. It’s purposefully spicy. Everything I make, I want to pick it up and not question what flavor it is.”

In the details, more evidence of an animated baker are obvious: the citron cake jar features melt-in-your-mouth super-strength lemon cake and buttery shortbread layered with zesty lemon curd and vanilla meringue buttercream.

The blood orange pistachio cake in the “Extravagance” collection pins the top spot for decadence with pistachio sponge, tangy blood orange curd, velvety whipped chocolate ganache from Ambanja, Madagascar, and a 24-carat gold leaf crown.

The cake also sports the highest ticket price: $575. Inevitably, questions about pricing, overhead and budgets follow. A primary reason Allen selected Montclair for the first of what she hopes will be multiple Bay Area shops is local residents’ average incomes.

“We have a higher price point, so I wanted to be in a location where people have higher incomes. My goal is to pay my staff a living wage, which is part of the reason for our prices. To do that and be viable, the community needs to be able to support my business.”

Allen says Montclair Village leaders also expressed a strong desire to have another bakery to add to the district’s businesses. A referral to TMC Capital from the Oakland Black Business Fund provided an enormous assist.

The company helped Allen secure a loan, do the paperwork and navigate the back-and-forth between contingencies placed by the property owner and the lender. She also had two $20,000 grants and personal savings that she had to dip into steeply when renovation “surprises” exceeded budgeted amounts.

“My best advice for anyone opening a business is to be prepared for unknown things. Even with budgets and spreadsheets, something will come up that you have to cover to open.”

Since opening, the scones have proved “super-popular,” the focaccia (available only on weekends) has developed a cult following and — echoing Allen’s long-ago pie possessiveness — the staff fights over any leftovers.

Other popular items were the numerous pies that “flew out the door” at Thanksgiving, and under the shop’s catering program more customers are moving beyond traditional white wedding cakes and letting Allen indulge her love for color and designing in buttercream or with flowers.

In the future, she hopes to add yeast breads and expand into a large company with more locations but maintain the quality of a small business.

“To have Full Belly’s in multiple cities will mean more people can grab a scone, slice of pie or cookie on a bad day and feel good.”

Invited to dream, Allen says, “I never have enough time for experimenting. My dream job is where I’m only doing recipe development.

“I love working with passion fruit, lemon and mango. In my mind everybody has different palettes. While creating, I keep in mind reaching our target market of people who like cake and love super-flavorful desserts.”

Full Belly Bakery (fullbellybakery.com) is at 2087 Mountain Blvd, Unit A, in Oakland’s Montclair Village.

Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Reach her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.