A Pound of Love

Educator’s 2024 pound cake win was Epic

By Rita Cook
Correspondent
Texas Metro News

DALLAS – When Angela Davis Henry won last year’s Pound Cake Competition at the Realizing the Dream Healthy Living Expo, she could not have been more excited considering she has been baking all her life.

Davis Henry, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, has called DeSoto home for almost 20 years along with her husband, Robert, and their little black cocker spaniel, Ebony.

She has worked in education for more than 25 years and is currently the Director of Partnerships & Engagement for the Duncanville ISD.

A proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, she said baking and cooking are her favorite hobbies, but she also counts “traveling, gardening, reading, and, when time permits, knitting and crocheting” high on the list as well. “Baking is my happy place, a definite stress reliever,” Davis Henry explained. “My love for baking began at a very young age, maybe around eight or nine when I got my Easy-Bake Oven.”  Inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2006, the Easy Bake Oven was launched on November 4, 1963, just in time for Christmas shopping season, and was an immediate hit for its target audience, young girls like Davis Henry.

While Betty Crocker was the cake mix of choice for the millions of children who embraced the toy and “experience,” Davis Henry also used the product, but today she has her special recipes.

“I think I baked everything that came with it on Christmas Day. From there, my passion grew as my mom encouraged me to bake whenever I wanted. She never discouraged me, even if I was probably wasting a lot of flour along the way.”

The moonlighting baker decided to enter the pound cake contest last year when a friend of hers, a caterer, sent her the flyer for the contest. “On the date of the contest it had snowed the night before, so I slowly drove on snow covered roads to enter my cake for the judging,” she recalled.

She baked a sweet potato pound cake and said, “Amazingly, I won.” It was a special recipe after all, one that Davis Henry said she created in 2020 when she launched her home baking business, Inspired Pies, LLC during the pandemic.

At the Inspired Pies, LLC website (https://www.inspiredpies.com/). Davis Henry noted she also has a love of entertaining, because of her love of “being with family and good friends over great food and amazing desserts.”

Perhaps that is why she had a special place for her sweet potato pie last year, which she also adds was “a recipe that I am sure started in my great grandmother’s kitchen to my grandmother’s, to my mother’s, and to me where I added my own essence and love.”

Davis Henry said the Realizing the Dream Healthy Living Expo was “my very first contest that I entered and won, I hope to enter others.”

Davis Henry said she has become known for baking the best sweet potato pies. “I also create custom cakes like red velvet, white chocolate, strawberry, and jar cakes,” she added. “I have a few other pound cakes too, including lemon pound cake and a brown sugar praline pound cake topped with praline sauce.” And while one might think pound cakes are her favorite recipe to bake, she said she also bakes pies, and adds “The truth is, I love baking everything.”

“I also create custom cakes like red velvet, white chocolate, strawberry, and jar cakes,” she added.

Last year after her pound cake’s first place honor, Cheryl Smith, Founder of Realizing the Dream Healthy Living Expo said of Davis’s baking win, “She is the person who made the Best Pound Cake in Dallas-Fort Worth and sure, she has the distinction of baking the best pound cake, but I have heard she is great at anything she creates in the kitchen and I plan on being one of her biggest customers and I might also have to challenge her on the sweet potato pie because mine won first place in a contest during KwanzaaFest (which was held for decades in South Dallas).”

Davis Henry’s love of baking comes from “the creative process.” She loves baking for others too, and said part of the enjoyment that makes her feel truly gratified is that her baking brings joy and satisfaction to the people experiencing her baked goodies.

Smith also said she was impressed by Davis Henry’s beautiful spirit. “Not just because she is a community servant, born leader, and genuinely nice person; or we share the same birth date,” Smith said of Davis Henry after her win last year, “but because she is a truly impressive person.”

Smith noted an interesting footnote about last year’s contest. One of the judges does not like sweet potatoes, but thoroughly enjoyed Davis Henry’s cake!

This year’s cook-off features a Collard Greens and Cornbread contest and is poised to be worth a visit as there will certainly be a variety of recipes introduced. Cooking demonstrations will feature Chef Cassondra and there will be several food vendors. The 8th Annual Realizing the Dream Healthy Living Expo will be on Monday, January 20, 2025, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with sponsors Comerica Bank and Cre8ive Outlet, along with WAAITT (We Are All In This Together) also on board.

A free event, there will be businesses, speakers and programming geared toward building stronger families and communities and will also include activists, educators, advisors, entertainment, screenings, college representatives, insurance and financial planning advisors, and voter registration booths.

There will also be Karaoke, Line Dancing and Vivian Chapel CME’s Kitchen will provide food bags for 250 families. This is an event for the entire family, said Smith, adding, “and that’s just the way Dr. King would have wanted it!”