https://mackays-bakery.myshopify.com/

MacKay’s Bakery, Pickering, ON (2026)

06/18/2026

Don’t Go Brookie My Heart, I Carrot If I Tried…

Around here, a cake bucket is never just a cake bucket, and now, apparently, a spoon is never just a spoon either.

I often joke that I woke up one morning during a layoff and decided opening a bakery sounded perfectly reasonable. And somehow, it was, because six years later it has become a very elaborate form of narrative therapy through posts about my life.

The bakery was never just about baking. It became a scrapbook, a history lesson, a family archive, and occasionally, an opportunity to write 2,000 characters about a spoon.

When I look back, I realize I have had a very lucky journey lately and in fact, a very lucky life. It hasn’t been perfect and certainly not without hardship, but full of incredible people, meaningful opportunities, and tiny ideas that somehow grew into much bigger things.

Since day one, my mom has always said I was born with horseshoes, and my dad always said, “every day, in every way, you’re getting better and better.” Perhaps the collection of these affirmations has helped pave my outlook. While I may not have been born with a silver spoon, somewhere along the way I was as given a reason for a golden one.

Years ago, I chose a golden spoon for our cake buckets because I wanted the experience to feel a little extra special. It eventually became a part of our heritage signature. Every week, I see so many of you digging into your buckets with your golden spoons, and it makes me smile every time.

So this weekend, in true MacKay’s Bakery fashion, we are introducing The Golden Bucket Bundle. It felt fitting to pair our signature Caramel Carrot Cake with a Brookie Cookie Puck because, like the cake, this cookie has been with us since year one. A little history, a little nostalgia, and, of course, your own golden spoon to neatly bow it all together.

The Golden Bucket Bundle will be available Thursday at 7 p.m. for our regular weekend bucket drop with pickup Friday through Sunday.

… I suppose, as it turns out, it was my horseshoe spoon all along.

xo

06/13/2026

Six years ago, during a COVID layoff, I woke up one morning and decided I was going to open a bakery.
To this day, I am still not entirely sure why that felt like a reasonable decision.

When I told my parents, I think their response was somewhere between supportive and perplexed. The funny part is that I was probably more excited about the paperwork than the baking. I have always loved learning how things work, and opening a business felt like one giant research project. On June 11, 2020, I completed my first public health inspection, passed, opened my doors, and started taking orders.

At first, those orders came mostly from friends, family, and coworkers who were kind enough to give me a chance. Looking back, I realize how much grace they gave me while I figured things out, and I will always be grateful for that.

Over the years, this bakery has been many different things. There were markets, live sales, cookie boxes, cake slices, heritage recipes, taste tests, and more ideas than I can count. Some worked beautifully, some definitely did not.

This bakery is truly a family business. Perhaps it’s due time I write about the roles each of them plays on a daily basis; it’s actually wild how much is contributed and created by people that are not me!

And then there’s the buckets. They came out of something special; a story I can’t wait to tell someday soon. They grew from years of watching people fall in love with our cakes and desserts and asking for bigger portions, and eventually they became the little branded buckets you know today.

This weekend’s three bucket drops were our way of celebrating six years of MacKay’s Bakery. Whether you ordered in 2020 or bought something this week, thank you. Every order, every share, every recommendation, and every bit of support helped build this little business.

Six years later, I am still in awe that you are all here… can’t wait to take this show on the road with our little Teacup Trailer Swift xo 💕

06/11/2026

HAPPY 6 YEAR ANNIVERSARY TO MACKAY’S!

And now… a little note about pre-orders.

One of the loveliest surprises of the last few months has been watching this little bakery grow. What began as a few trays of cake has become hundreds of messages, hundreds of pre-order requests each week, and a telephone that seems determined never to stop ringing.

As grateful as I am for every single one of those requests, I have learned that I cannot do everything well at the same time.

The buckets are only one chapter in the story of MacKay’s Bakery. There are little treats for the fridge, new recipes to dream up, website updates to manage, dishes to wash, ingredients to order, and, most importantly, and a toddler with me all day! If I opened pre-orders for everything we make, I would spend more time behind a screen than behind an oven.

For that reason, pre-orders will remain exclusive to our Thursday evening 7 p.m. weekend Bucket Drop. Everything else will continue to be released to the website as it is baked, packaged, and ready to go. It is the simplest way I have found to keep this little bakery running while ensuring everyone has the same opportunity to shop.

Please know that we are baking as much as we possibly can. If you miss a bucket or a treat one week, there is a very good chance something else sweet will find its way onto the shelves before long.

Thank you for allowing this little bakery to grow while still letting it remain what I always hoped it would be: a small family business built around good baking, good people, and a life that still leaves room for the things that matter most.

05/30/2026

📸 LEMON SQUARE COOKIE PUCK

Hey Sugar, broadcasting live from the Pink Floral Teacup.

A little story about the name, because we get asked this one often.

MacKay’s Bakery, pronounced /mækˈkaɪ/, is named after my grandmother’s family line, the MacKays, a Scottish Highland family name with roots stretching back through Sutherland before eventually making its way to Canada generations later.

Family lineage sits at the forefront of almost everything we do here. The bakery wasn’t built just around desserts, but rather around inheritance in the most meaningful sense of the word: recipes passed between women, handwritten cards tucked into kitchen drawers and the memory of what someone always brought to Christmas gatherings.

Our family history carries some remarkable stories, and those stories lived around me long before the business ever existed. Even our logo carries that history. It was inspired by a postal stamp from a WWII letter home written by my grandfather while serving as a supply pilot during the war.

Something about that small, worn stamp stayed with me: a reminder that care has always travelled through ordinary things. So while nostalgic desserts may be becoming trendy again culturally, they have never been a trend to us, they have always been the heartbeat of this bakery.

Underneath the charming pink, MacKay’s has always really been about remembering where you came from and carrying it forward lovingly within your community.

05/25/2026

Hey Sugar, reporting live from the Pink Floral Teacup.

Lately, everyone has been talking about the dot cake trend like it just appeared, but the truth is these cakes are rooted in desserts many of us have loved for decades. The internet rediscovered them because whimsically re-imagined them in a beautifully innovative form.

Those colourful little nonpareils instantly bring people back to childhood. They remind people of sheet cakes on folding tables, birthday parties with paper plates and candles, grocery store bakery boxes carried carefully into classrooms, and the simple joy of desserts made to celebrate people you love.

Birthday cake and our own take on rainbow bit frosting has been part of my creative world since the early days of the bakery, long before social media turned nostalgic desserts into a viral aesthetic. To me, those bright rainbow dots have never been about trends. They represent happiness, celebration, abundance, creativity, and the kind of sweets people instinctively connect to memory and comfort.

What fascinates me most is that we are living through this larger cultural return to maximalist nostalgia. After years of minimalist aesthetics and perfectly curated beige everything, people suddenly seem to want colour again. They want joy, excess and desserts that feel playful and unapologetically celebratory.

So watching the world suddenly fall back in love with rainbow dots, over the top cakes, and desserts that feel tied to childhood memories has honestly felt really special. In this house, nostalgia has never been something we chased because it was popular online. It has always been woven into everything we create. From handwritten family recipes and church cookbook inspiration to heritage desserts, old fashioned grocery store cakes, and birthday party classics.

When the viral trend of nostalgia is quite literally your entire personality and business, moments like this feel a little bit like gold. 🌈🪣

05/19/2026

📸 Nanaimo Bar Cookie Puck

Hey Sugar! Broadcasting live from the Pink Floral Teacup. 🫖

It has been a little while since I shared a life update that didn’t involve viral buckets or all things sugar, so here we are.

We will be taking a small holiday pause beginning tomorrow through May 26. It's certainly not because I would ever willingly take a single day off... you know me better than that by now. I would happily stay up all night and wake before the sunrise just to keep baking for you if I could.

But this week, I need a little reset.
If you’ve been here for a while, you know that since last August I’ve been navigating some health challenges that are a little tricky to manage. This week, I'm beginning a new treatment, and I need to give my body the time and space to adjust.

The last few months have been exciting, overwhelming, joyful, exhausting, and deeply humbling all at once. This little bakery has grown in ways we never expected, and we are endlessly grateful for every order, message, visit, and kind word. We also know we need a brief pause to regroup and make sure we are building things sustainably moving forward.

So this week will be spent resting, reorganizing, reordering supplies, and planning carefully for what comes next. We are actively working on ways to expand offerings, increase production, and make this next season of MacKay’s Bakery even sweeter so that we come back with a fresh menu, fresh ideas, and full hearts.

We’ll be back on May 27 and before anyone panics, yes, I promise, promise, promise… Caramel Carrot Cake is staying on the menu for good.

05/10/2026

📸 Chocolate Caramel Brownie Cake Bucket

I think one of the biggest signs that your mom is also your best friend is realizing you never really get tired of being around her.

It’s kind of funny in our case because we live on the same street and see each other almost every single day. If a day passes where I do not see her, it feels unusual somehow, like the rhythm of the day got thrown off a little. Even years ago, I still always wanted to stop by my parents’ house, and now somehow I want to see them even more.

I know some people would probably hear that and immediately joke about codependence, but I don’t think that is what this is at all. I think I simply grew up genuinely liking my mother as a person.

I love talking to her, I love spending time with her and I love the perspective and outlook she carries. She has always been the person I call first, the person I tell everything to, and the person who somehow understands what I mean even when I am explaining something badly while simultaneously trying to manage a toddler climbing across my lap.

There is something deeply comforting about being understood by someone who has known you your entire life.

My mom had me at 26, which feels wild to me now because I had Tessa at 39. I think that age difference shaped our relationship in ways I did not fully appreciate until I became a mother myself. She was always my mom, but she was also somebody I genuinely wanted to be like. We could spend entire days together doing completely ordinary things and still laugh the whole time. Running errands with her somehow still feels comforting in the same way it did when I was little.

I think Mother’s Day starts to feel different as you get older. It becomes less about one Sunday in May and more about realizing who stood beside you through every version of yourself you have ever been.

I got incredibly lucky with her.

She is my mom, she is my best friend, and I do not think a single day goes by where I am not grateful that those two things became the very same person.

05/08/2026

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙱𝚞𝚌𝚔𝚎𝚝 𝙳𝚛𝚘𝚙

• Every Thursday evening at 7:00 PM sharp, Cake & Cheesecake Bucket orders open on our website for the upcoming weekend and week, all at once.

• Old fashioned style, like when you knew the bakery window would fill just before supper.

• Mark your calendar so you do not miss out.

• Visit www.mackaysbakery.com and place your order for our exclusive Cake & Cheesecake Buckets. Each bucket is layered, filled, and prepared by hand into our eco friendly reusable buckets, with genuine care, making every dessert a little unique each time.

• You will receive an email once your order has been confirmed, along with another email the day before your selected pickup date containing pickup instructions.

• Pickup is available in Pickering only. We do not currently offer shipping or delivery.

• Please add your preferred pickup date in the Notes section at checkout so we can prepare your bucket for your chosen day.

• If no pickup date is specified, your order will automatically be scheduled for the first pickup day listed on our website.

• Extra Buckets may appear on the website throughout the week whenever we have spare baking capacity. From time to time, a few may also find their way into our honour system fridge for spontaneous sweet cravings or gifting surprises on a first come, first served basis.

Every week we convince ourselves we have made enough buckets, which has comically become the bakery version of tempting fate. Somewhere along the way, all of you managed to fill our buckets right back, in every sense of the phrase.

We are deeply grateful for your enthusiasm and kindness. Your support means more to our family than we could properly put into words, and every week we look forward to baking for you all over again.

We hope you will join us for the next Bucket Drop and become part of our growing little community, one handmade Bucket at a time.

05/04/2026

There’s a moment I treasure in any car ride, when the radio dial gets turned up, and we’re into a part of the song where lyrics pulse with raw emotion. This is the “rant bridge”: a section where an artist lays their soul bare, unleashing unfiltered truth with intensity and vulnerability. It’s not just a musical passage; it’s an emotional release, a confessional where everything comes out at once. So, in the spirit of that musical honesty, here’s my own “rant bridge”.

Like my Mom, my childhood was soft, thoughtful, and remarkably clear. At home, meaningful conversations were valued, and dreaming was part of daily life. I learned that everyone's story mattered, and our kitchen table became a space to listen, share, and nurture dreams. Praise in our house wasn’t just tossed around like confetti—it came with context, perspective, and humility.

My Dad spoke daily affirmations to me, a refrain that still echoes: “Every day, in every way, you are getting better and better.” This wasn’t just encouragement, it taught me to check in with myself, to weigh the good and the tough, to see how both sides add up to growth. Self-worth was built like compounding interest that grows over years.

My parents are still here, literally and physically, ready with oven mitts or an extra set of hands for my toddler. Their loyalty is durable; something I’ve leaned on through every setback and celebration, never once wavering.

I see these lessons now reflected in my own home. My husband and my toddler are with me through every moment. Our beliefs are simple: joy doesn’t require milestones, nothing is too sticky to sort through, and love resonates brighter the more freely it’s given. We keep the conversation going, just as my parents did, and let everyday kindness anchor our family.

So, when people ask how I’m managing—especially during my serious health battles—the truth is that it’s not just dazzling discipline or personal grit, it’s the presence of everyone around me. They are my foundation, my buffer against uncertainty, and the best kind of backup plan. Their support lifts me, lets me keep reaching, and reminds me that vulnerability shared is what makes us strong.

MacKay’s Bakery

06/18/2026

06/13/2026

06/11/2026

05/30/2026

05/25/2026

05/19/2026

05/10/2026

05/08/2026

05/04/2026

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