Dreamworld Bakes, Philly’s glittery custom cake shop, is opening a brick-and-mortar bakery

In the past four years, Ashley Huston’s Dreamworld Bakes has gained a reputation for its sparkly, seasonal, buttercream-frosted cakes and imaginative spins on classic treats (think artisan Cosmic Brownies). The bread and butter of the online microbakery’s business has been custom orders, popups, and catering.

But come spring, Dreamworld Bakes’ sweets will be a lot easier to score: Huston is building out a brick-and-mortar space in Kensington.

Part cake studio, part bakery, part cafe, Dreamworld will open in the former Franny Lou’s Porch at 2400 Coral St. Huston plans to offer cake slices, sweet and savory breakfast pastries, and lunch items like ricotta toast. She plans to change the menu monthly. She’d also like to hold occasional dinners at the space.

“Everything will have glitter. Or flowers,” Huston joked, referencing two of her trademark cake decorations.

Huston co-owns the building at 2400 Coral St. with Chantelle Todman, one of her former partners in Franny Lou’s. She’s outfitting the space with new equipment, and working with an architect to rejigger the cafe’s layout. While most baking will take place in the basement, there will be a redesigned coffee bar/kitchen area and a seating toward the front of the shop. Huston, who dabbles in interior design, envisions green tile and a wallpapered bathroom.

Dreamworld will still fulfill custom orders and work the popup circuit between now and the bakery’s opening. Huston has a busy February, starting with a fundraiser at (and for) the new space on Feb. 3.

“Opening up a space is not cheap,” she said.

She plans to sell three cakes — including Baby Spice, which Huston considers her best cake: a cardamom sponge cake with passion fruit curd, mango chai mousse, and tonka bean Italian buttercream. Slices will be priced on a sliding scale from $15 to $25.

Opening a bakery has been a long-percolating ambition for Huston, who moved to Philly from Arizona at age 5 — just in time for the Blizzard of ‘96 (“I think the snow was as big as me”) — and lived in Nicetown, Kensington, and the Northeast. She grew up loving to bake and cook. “I had dreams of being a chef, or being on Iron Chef and stuff like that. But I was like, ‘That’s never gonna happen.’”

She graduated from Temple University with a degree in finance but knew early on it wasn’t a great career fit. So she joined the Peace Corps and went to Tanzania. When she came back home to Philly in 2016, she still had the cooking (and baking) bug. She talked herself into doing it professionally, landing a job as a line cook at South Bowl and North Bowl. She credits them with taking a chance on her and allowing her to experiment with dessert specials, despite the absence of a dessert program.

Dreamworld Bakes began in earnest during the pandemic, when Huston (and everyone else) had extra time on her hands. She had long been baking birthday cakes for friends — a hobby which had led to one-off custom cake orders — but the downtime prompted her to brand the endeavor and market it on Instagram.

By this time, Huston was working at Franny Lou’s, where she started as a manager and a baker in 2018, eventually becoming a part-owner. The business fractured amidst a legal dispute in 2022, putting Huston in personal and professional limbo. She decided to throw her energy and attention into Dreamworld. “That’s when it became my full-time job,” Huston said. “I was like, ‘if there ever was a chance, this is probably it.’”

She ratcheted up production, taking cake commissions and catering jobs, advertising monthly menus of cakes, cookies, doughnuts, and hand pies. She wracked up a list of frequent collaborators, including Riverwards Produce, Forin, Mural City Cellars, before launching Dessert People’s Club, a monthly, subscription-based dessert box, last year.

Soon, business was too bustling to be a one-woman show, so she paused the club. That was a sign Dreamworld was ready to go brick-and-mortar and bring on more employees.

“There was always a little part of me that, since I was a little kid, was like, ‘I want people to come to my space and eat my food,’” Huston said. “It kind of worked out.”