HERMON, Maine — In a 5,400-square-foot facility located in an unassuming business park on Liberty Drive in Hermon, three employees last year churned out 25,000 pounds of a unique Maine product: Bakewell Cream.
Jim Collins of Hampden is only the fourth person to own Bakewell Cream, now produced by his company, New England Cupboard, and he’s heavily involved in the manufacturing of the product. On a recent trip to the manufacturing facility, Collins showed how the leavening agent is made.
“This is 1,000 pounds of Bakewell Cream,” Jim Collins said, patting the top of a giant hopper filled with the powdery substance.
Collins flipped a switch on the machine that fills the tins, and a loud, mechanical whirring echoed around the room. He grabbed a tin, positioned it under the machine and hit a foot pedal. Bakewell Cream poured from the machine, filling the small, round, blue-and-yellow tin — a recognizable receptacle that has barely changed since the product’s inception.
“We manufacture everything ourselves here from scratch. I don’t buy anything and repackage it,” Collins said of the products New England Cupboard produces. Collins, a chef by trade, sells Bakewell Cream to larger companies such as Hannaford and King Arthur Flour.
“I, for the most part, make everything,” Collins said of the various products New England Cupboard handles. “They package it,” he said of his two other employees.
Bakewell Cream was developed in the mid-1940s by Byron H. Smith, a chemist from Bangor, who was looking for a substitute for cream of tartar during World War II wartime shortages. The product contains no additives, colors or dyes and has a long shelf life because of the product’s absence of bicarbonate of soda.
Smith’s business, Byron H. Smith & Co. Inc. was a unique entity, mainly because it specialized in products that had nothing to do with baking: paint and national brands of health and beauty aids. Bakewell Cream was their very own product, unique to their business and unique to Maine.
Since its launch, it has become an iconic and much-loved baking staple. Chefs, including Jill Strauss of Jillyanna’s Woodfired Cooking School, consider it a go-to for fluffy biscuits. The Kennebunkport resident, who is a culinary graduate of Johnson & Wales University, runs a business that teaches people how to cook with a wood-fired stone oven. She specializes in Neapolitan pizza, which she learned to make in Naples, Italy, and uses Bakewell Cream in her special buttermilk biscuits.
“It just worked so well I couldn’t imagine doing it without,” Strauss said.
According to the company, Bakewell Cream won’t function as a substitute for cream of tartar when beating egg whites for meringues or angel cakes but can replace baking powder for baking if used properly: by mixing two parts Bakewell Cream and one part baking soda.
Bakewell Cream comes in 8-ounce cans, 6-pound tubs, 25-pound tubs and 50-pound tubs. Though found mostly in New England, Collins has shipped the product all over the world and supplies businesses outside the area, such as Biscuits and Buns on Banks in New Orleans, Louisiana, which regularly purchases the 50-pound option. Collins said it’s mostly a seasonal product, with sales spiking during the winter holiday season.
New England Cupboard owns a variety of companies and manufactures the items special to each of them, including the popover mixes of Winterport Co.; Jimbo’s Spice Rubs, which was Collins’ business before he took over New England Cupboard; and pancake, waffle and scone mixes from Cook in the Kitchen. Each of these companies was bought out by New England Cupboard, which specializes in baking mixes for items such as pancakes, muffins and scones.
When Dianne Lovejoy, the previous owner of New England Cupboard, decided to sell the business, she turned to Collins, who she had been working with.
“[Lovejoy] had another guy who wanted to buy it and was ready to write a check. She didn’t sell it to him because she was going to give me first refusal, but also because he was going to take it out of state,” Collins said.
Collins said Lovejoy understood the importance of keeping the company in Maine. The powdered leavening agent, sodium acid pyrophosphate mixed with cornstarch, was more than just a product; it’s a piece of Maine.