Whimsy Cheesecakes is a fresh reason to visit 30th and Troost

Carla Schreiber has a dream, and it’s a pretty big one.

Schreiber wants to bring pastry customers back to a stretch of Troost that hasn’t had much of a retail presence, let alone been a culinary destination, for nearly half a century. 

How? With cheesecake. 

This week, Schreiber officially set up Whimsy Cheesecakes inside Shannon Kimball’s Flavor Trade shop, at 3000 Troost.

Schreiber started baking cheesecakes for friends in 2008. “And the friends told friends who told friends,” she says. “And then I got requests to mail cheesecakes out of the city and, after a lot of trial and error, I got that down and started shipping cheesecakes and my mail-order business was born.”

For the Troost location, Schreiber is selling only her small cheesecakes. “I didn’t want the cost to be prohibitive, and there are plenty of people who don’t want a big cheesecake in one flavor, they want a lot of small cheesecakes in a variety of flavors,” she says. “I also wanted to open a shop in an area of town where you wouldn’t expect to find something like this. Everyone should have access to gourmet foods.”

Kimball manufactures, co-packages and distributes a variety of locally produced food items for Flavor Trade, including barbecue sauces, salad dressings and soda. His big, pre-World War II building has led dozens of lives (including an art school and several bakeries and, most recently, the Wonder Bread Thrift Store). The storefront doesn’t yet have a sign, and the building is easy to miss, thanks to the torn-up street; a construction crew is replacing the road and building new sidewalks literally in front of the venue’s parking lot. But rest assured, it’s open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. (Pro tip: Take 31st Street to Harrison, then Harrison to 30th Street, turn left, ignoring the conflicting signs, and park in the lot north of the building, which faces Troost.)

In Schreiber’s display case are bite-sized cheesecakes she calls Drops, which retail for $15 a dozen. Slightly larger are the cupcake-sized mini cheesecakes (at $2 each) and the muffin-sized midi cheesecakes, at $4 each. The flavors include a blueberry-cardamom-and-lavender combination that’s very good; I also like the spicy Mexican chocolate cheesecake she calls the “Diva.”

Schreiber hopes to add Saturday hours in May, provided the construction outside ends. For now, Whimsy Cheesecakes can be reached at 816-800-1142.