Mrs. Bailey Bakes—So You Don't Have To

Alvetta Bailey tugs the plastic wrap from a loaf of quickbread and, immediately, the scent of citrus zest and sugar surrounds her.

Acting on instinct, a visitor to Bailey’s kitchen at the Haddonfield Home bends over the loaf, inhaling the fragrance and hoping for a crumb that fell loose.

There are no loose crumbs anywhere near Mrs. Bailey, general manager of dining services at the home on Warwick Road, a facility that has provided continuing care for up to 52 residents since 1954.

For almost 23 years, Bailey, who lives in Willingboro, has been the woman in charge of three meals a day for each of the residents. Those meals include expected entrees like roast turkey, chicken, lamb, pork and meat loaf, and they always are brightened by Bailey’s glory: her baked goods.

Bailey has a permissive attitude about desserts for the residents: If they want ice cream three times a day, they’ll get it, she says.

Her cakes, cookies, breads and especially pies are so favored, that she offers them for sale to the public. All it takes is a phone call to the home at 856-429-5500. After at least three hours’ notice, Monday through Friday, you can take home Bailey’s delights. You just pick it up at the visitor’s entrance, right off the Victorian porch that wraps around the building.

The baked items won’t rupture the grocery budget. The most expensive item is an $18 apple cake so high it almost exceeds an adult’s outstretched hand. Apple, cherry, or peach strudels are $8.50, the same price as most of the quick bread loaves.

A dozen old-fashioned ginger cookies, incredibly soft and bursting with the tastes of molasses and ginger, are an additional 50¢.

Pies are $14 to $16 and the buyer can select from pumpkin, apple, banana cream, sweet potato or fruits in season, like blueberries. The lemon meringue pie, crafted with a recipe Bailey learned from her grandmother, is a constant request, but Bailey warns it’s tough to put together on a muggy day.

All proceeds from sales to the public benefit the Haddonfield Home, and usually are used at Bailey’s discretion for holiday decorations and fresh flowers for the dining room, and some heavy-duty appliances like a new convection oven. Because the kitchen staff does its own laundry, the costs of a replacement clothes washer and dryer also came from the bakery receipts.

The three-hour lead time for baked goods might seem tough to meet, but Bailey just smiles about it. A day’s notice would be better, she says, but if you have only three hours to secure a dessert, she’ll come through for you.

Bailey, 66, has been working in institutional kitchens for 40 years, beginning as a production manager at Buttonwood Hall, Burlington County’s home for the elderly, in Pemberton Township.

She then worked for 16 years at the Evergreens in Moorestown, a private retirement and assisted living facility. She was recruited from the Evergreens for the post at Haddonfield Home, a not-for-profit facility owned by Springpoint Senior Living.

Her day begins at 7 a.m. and continues until at least 5 p.m. Although tray service is available for bed-bound residents, all are encouraged when possible to eat in the dining room, where framed photographs of the residents are on the tables set for four.

Bailey said she had worked at the Haddonfield Home for about five years when a relative of a resident asked he she could make pies for “an outsider.”

“I said, ‘Certainly,’” Bailey remembers and the orders piled up so she now has a flier that changes a bit with each season. “We sell a lot of pies,” she said, and both the apple cake and a coconut cake are popular choices. New options spring up, like her sweet lime bread, or coffee loaf spiced with espresso, or a coconut loaf now on the list of baked goods.

“If I have (the ingredients) in the kitchen, I’ll make it for you. I’ll make you whatever you want. One customer always asks for extra blueberries in his pie,” she says, noting that he drives from the Atco section of Waterford to pick up his order.

Requests are so heavy at holidays, especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas, that the receptionist for the home has to work out schedules for pickup.

“I enjoy everything about working here. It’s more than the cooking and baking. I love the residents. They’re like my family,” she says.

Bailey learned many of her baking secrets from her mother, and she doesn’t share them. Her mother also decided on her unusual first name. “She read it in a magazine,” says Bailey.

As the kitchen boss, she supervises 12 staff and works with two or three interns assigned to her from Camden County College’s nutrition program.

Kitchen duties end when she goes home each day, Bailey says. Her husband, Raymond, cooks their dinner.