On a busy stretch of University Avenue in Windsor Heights, The Bake Shoppe has long been one of Des Moines’ iconic food institutions. It is a place where customers duck in for a single cupcake, a box of petit fours or, for many families, the only birthday cake that’s ever really mattered: the Champagne cake.
Now, the couple behind the bakery’s latest chapter has carried that legacy west, expanding to fast-growing Waukee while fiercely protecting the traditions that made the shop beloved in the first place.
Owners Lisa and Chris Kannapel didn’t start as professional bakers. They were longtime teachers — Lisa in elementary school, Chris in high school — who baked on the side and slowly turned a biscotti hobby into a wholesale business serving dozens of coffee shops across the Des Moines metro. That side project eventually led them to The Bake Shoppe in Windsor Heights.
Chris approached then‑owner Dave Stark, whose family had long run The Bake Shoppe, to rent kitchen space for their biscotti. Stark agreed, and over more than a decade of shared ovens and late-night baking, the relationship deepened.
When Stark finally decided it was time to retire, he approached the Kannapels with a simple proposition: Did they want to buy the bakery? They did.
In October 2021, the Kannapels quietly took over the business. They purposely didn’t make a big announcement.
“We did it intentionally. I was afraid that we would lose business because, what’s your first thought? ‘Oh, it’s gonna change. It’s gonna go downhill,’” Lisa Kannapel said.
Stark stayed on as a consultant and baker to ensure a smooth transition. The result: most customers never felt an abrupt shift, only that the shop seemed a little busier, a little fresher and still familiar.
At the heart of the bakery is the Champagne cake, a pretty pink chiffon cake with a light cream filling and rosy pink buttercream frosting.
Moving west to Waukee
The Waukee expansion came about the way many small‑town Iowa deals do: through a customer who fell in love with the baked goods. One woman tasted the shop’s petit fours, tracked down the bakery and then revealed she was developing a building in Waukee and wanted them as a tenant.
The Waukee location, in the city’s Waukee Triangle, is part of a broader effort to revitalize that core. Developer Steffaney Cronin has been working to bring in local, independent concepts; The Bake Shoppe’s mix of nostalgia and meticulous scratch baking fits neatly into that vision.
The Kannapels opened their second location in Waukee on June 1. Inside: a full bakery operation, not just a satellite case.
“We’ve got a full oven and max equipment. It is a smaller space, but the plan is to keep the menus the same,” Lisa Kannapel said.
Certain specialty items — like specific breads or tea cookies — may be baked in Windsor Heights and ferried over, but Waukee customers will be able to get the same Champagne cake, petit fours and everyday treats that built the brand.
What’s the history of The Bake Shoppe?
The Bake Shoppe’s story is really the story of Des Moines’ most enduring dessert — the Champagne cake — and the Stark family who safeguarded it for nearly eight decades. The cake’s lineage begins in 1948, when the Starks purchased Barbara’s Bake Shop and quietly set the foundation for what would become the city’s largest retail bakery. Mid‑century Des Moines embraced Barbara’s for its scratch‑made classics, but the Champagne cake became its calling card: a pastel, lightly sweet, celebratory confection that appeared at birthdays, weddings, office parties and holiday tables for generations.
By the mid‑1960s, a teenage Dave Stark was already working in the bakery, absorbing the rhythms of production and the nuances of the recipes that defined the brand. When his uncle retired, Stark and his brother took over, steering Barbara’s Bake Shop through decades of growth until selling the business in 1990. Even during his brief hiatus — traveling, experimenting with restaurants and later running the corporate bakery inside Principal Financial Group — the Champagne cake remained part of his identity.
In 2003, Stark brought that legacy back to the public with The Bake Shoppe in Windsor Heights. What made the rebirth meaningful wasn’t nostalgia alone; it was fidelity. The Bake Shoppe revived Barbara’s exact recipes, from the Champagne cake’s signature crumb to the scratch‑made frostings that longtime customers could identify by taste alone.
Today, The Bake Shoppe balances tradition with modern touches like custom sugar cookies, petit fours and challah, but its heartbeat remains the Champagne cake. During Easter, demand still surges, and those egg‑shaped cakes continue to anchor celebrations across the metro — proof that some classics never lose their place.
What to order at The Bake Shoppe, from Champagne cake to Dutch letters
While Champagne cake is the undisputed headliner, The Bake Shoppe’s case tells a broader story about what the bakery offers.
Champagne cake and cupcakes: Customers can find everything from layer cakes to slices, with that signature chiffon crumb and sweet, white filling. Champagne cupcakes make the cake format more accessible — and perfect for those airport‑to‑bakery pilgrimages.
Petit fours: If Champagne cake is the star, petit fours might be the cult favorite.
“I’d say a close second would be the petit fours. I’ve seen things that are similar, but nothing that tastes anything like these,” Lisa Kannapel said.
Chocolate cake and almond cake: Some customers prefer a different take on cake and go for the second and third most popular flavors: chocolate or almond.
Bars and cookies: Buttermilk brownies, turtle bars, Ida Mae bars and seven-layer bars, as well as cookies such as decorated sugar, peanut butter and chocolate chip.
Pies and seasonal baking: Around Thanksgiving, The Bake Shoppe becomes a pie factory. Lisa and Chris Kannapel insist on making pie crusts from scratch, abandoning premade shells after a disastrous holiday scramble when vendor crusts ran out.
“We do 800 to 1,000 pies for Thanksgiving, and we’ll make all those. We prep all of those in advance,” Lisa Kannapel said. “Our first Thanksgiving here, they were buying pie crusts from one of the vendors. We ran out before Thanksgiving. Right after that, we decided no more of that. We’re going to make them from scratch. We’ve gotten so many compliments on our pie crust.”
They also make their own custards in a copper kettle that does double duty at Christmas, when it’s pressed into service for peanut brittle — another nod to the old‑school candy traditions that still resonate with Iowa customers.
Dutch letters: Beyond Champagne cake, the bakery has become part of the conversation around uniquely Iowa baked goods, including Dutch letters.
Lisa Kannapel has heard more than once that their version holds its own against Pella institutions.
“We’ve been told we’re better than Pella, but I don’t want to make Pella upset,” she said. “My belief is also that you like what you know.”
Cheesecakes and coffee cakes: The expanded cheesecake program is another quiet success. When Chris took over cheesecake production from Stark, he simply made them taller — literally giving customers more dessert.
The shop also bakes focaccia and biscotti for Taste of Italy, supplies cakes to Boesen the Florist for a flowers‑and‑cake combo, and provides pastries and coffee cakes to local cafes.
Biscotti, the origin story product
Their baking story began with biscotti bites, conceived on a long drive home from Colorado.
“We decided to start this company selling these to coffee shops,” Lisa Kannapel said of the biscotti that started the couple’s dive into baking. “Eventually, we got up to about 40 coffee shops and we couldn’t bake out of our house anymore.”
Today, biscotti is still in the case and in a handful of wholesale accounts, but production has moved from their home kitchen to the shop’s bakers. The farmers’ market era is over; the focus is now firmly on the brick‑and‑mortar bakeries.
The couple’s approach — hands‑on, relentlessly personal, loyal to recipes and relationships — has turned the shop into what Lisa Kannapel calls many customers’ “happy place.”
“We have so many customers who have turned into friends,” she said. “We don’t know what’s on their back when they walk in the door, but hopefully it’s a better one when they walk out the door. This is a lot of people’s happy place, and I want to keep it that way.”
Where to find The Bake Shoppe
Sign up for our dining newsletter, Table Talk DSM, which comes out on Wednesday mornings with all the latest news on restaurants and bars in the metro. You can sign up for free at DesMoinesRegister.com/tabletalk.
Susan Stapleton is the entertainment editor and dining reporter at The Des Moines Register. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or drop her a line at sstapleton@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: The Bake Shoppe brings its famous Champagne cake to Waukee
Reporting by Susan Stapleton, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Susan Stapleton, Des Moines Register | USA TODAY Network
