Eat This Now: Pastries from Little Butter Bakery

A Peach Fritter with local peaches and peach buttermilk glaze; Zucchini Cake with sesame and Valrhona dark chocolate buttercream; the Farmer’s Market Galette with ricotta, baby squash, mint, chile and lemon; and a Brioche Bun with tomato jam, prosciutto, and gruyère. // Photo by April Fleming

Kelsey Earl has only been baking under the name Little Butter Bakery since April—and in the handful of months since, her work has become something of a local phenomenon. 

Earl isn’t new to hospitality. Prior to Little Butter Bakery, she worked for years as a server and bartender, and she briefly baked under the name Focaccia for Produce. It was the pandemic that bumped her out of her comfort zone, and she became convinced that this might just be the time to try something new. 

“Little Butter is my passion project,” Earl says. “It’s something I always wanted but I just didn’t think I could have.”

Now, Earl’s weekly bakery boxes reliably sell out, and quickly. So do her pop-ups, which happen about two or three times a month, at places like Big Mood Natural Wines, Blip Roasters, and Foxtrot Studio. Earl loves using sustainable seasonal and local produce when she can, including local flours. 

Recent options in her boxes and pop-ups have included a local tomato tart with parmesan ricotta and black pepper; a peach honey bun made with Howard’s peaches and salted honey labneh frosting; and a stuffed breakfast bun made with Local Pig chorizo verde sausage, hatch green chile, onions, potatoes, and queso fresco. There are also wildly good chocolate chunk cookies, local pear tarts, donuts, cakes, and pull-apart brioche. She mixes savory and sweet, and usually there’s at least one discernably local ingredient in the mix.

We can’t recommend one specific item because Earl makes different stuff all the time—but what we can recommend is to keep an eye on her Instagram account, and scooping up what you can get. Whatever it is, you won’t regret it.