“I’ve had a lifelong love of food,” she said. “I love to see the joy that it can bring to another person. And so I always shared my love with people through food.”

That’s what led to her starting Yummy Crumb Bakery, where she makes a variety of baked goods — from custom cakes to decorated sugar cookies to French macarons to the ever-popular browned butter chocolate chip cookies.

“Those are like the fan favorite,” Groff said. “People just go gaga over them.”

Groff started baking for others, taking custom orders, in 2011, but a few years ago, she realized her kitchen just couldn’t keep up.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
The browned butter chocolate chip cookies are an extremely popular item at Yummy Crumb Bakery, owner Addrea Groff said.

“I had been baking from home and was outgrowing my space,” she said. “And so my husband is really the one that convinced me to open a storefront, because I just wasn’t that brave, but he really encouraged it.”

Groff and her husband, Tom Groff, purchased a vacant building at 13 N. 11th St. in downtown Fort Dodge, in 2019 and completely renovated the space to build two storefronts. Those storefronts are now home to Yummy Crumb Bakery and the Green Dragon Bookshop. The addresses are now 11 N. 11th St. and 9 N. 11th St., respectively.

“I have a love for downtown because my grandparents owned an antique store down here for my entire childhood,” Addrea Groff said. “I love seeing things happen down here, bringing some light back to our downtown.”

The bakery’s storefront officially opened in April.

While Yummy Crumb isn’t open daily, Groff does host “pop up” sales events on select Saturdays. Customers line up down the block for the opportunity to purchase the fresh-baked treats. They can also skip the line and pre-order on Groff’s website, www.yummycrumbbakery.com.

“Last week, I had maybe 1,000 and everything was sold out by 1 p.m.,” she said. “People can preorder online. I started doing that a couple months ago. They can preorder so they don’t have to just stop in and take their chances on what’s there.”

Groff has taken several classes at The Chopping Block, a cooking school in Chicago.

“I got to develop and refine my skills and now I just start playing in the kitchen,” she said. “Maybe you start with some recipe, but you may end up completely somewhere else. It’s a lot of experimentation.”

Her favorite product to make are the French macarons, a tricky meringue and almond flour soft cookie sandwich known for a ruffled ring around the bottom of the cookie called the “crown” or “foot.”

“I love making macarons because there’s just this gratification that you can make this thing that so many chefs around the world find it really hard to make,” she said. “And when I can make them and they have their perfect little feet and they’re good, it just feels really good and gives me the most gratification.”

The next bakery pop-up sale will be today from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today. A menu is available on the bakery’s website. The next pop-up will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Aug. 27.