Why Bakery Bunting Has Hearts — Behind the backstreet bakery, flour dust floated like pale fog while Iris stacked the last cupcake with her own sticky fingers. Read the full story →
Behind the backstreet bakery, flour dust floated like pale fog while Iris stacked the last cupcake with her own sticky fingers. She wanted the evening visitors to know she had built the whole sweets shelf herself, not the grown bakers with their quick silver spatulas. So she invented a game called Find My Hand: anyone who spotted five tiny marks she made by hand would earn the first crumb of carrot cake.
She tucked a dot under a jam jar, a swirl beside the teapot, and a little leaf near the menu frame. But the fifth mark would not stay secret. The warm oven breathed cinnamon through the room, the paper bunting shivered, and Iris’s two thumbprints pressed together at the top of a flag. They made a small heart.
When the bell tinkled, everyone found that heart first. Iris stood very still, cheeks hot as the lamp, then grinned. “I made that,” she said. Ever since, bakery bunting has carried hearts above the cakes, and if you search the shelves carefully, you may still find the other four marks of Iris’s own sticky fingers.
