About PPMD
Pie, Pie My Darling is a queer + one woman owned bakery serving up 100% vegan sweets in Chicago since 2014!
I don't like talking about myself in the 3rd person like a weirdo, so why don't I just introduce myself? My name is Heather, and I’m 32 years old. I've been vegan for 15 years and spent many of those years longing for all of the decadent egg and dairy laden desserts from my childhood. When I first made the plunge into veganism, I tried some non-dairy desserts and they were less than spectacular. You know what I'm talking about. They were dense, dry, heavy, and let’s be honest-- they tasted vegan.
For a girl like me with the world's biggest sweet tooth, this just wouldn't do. I had to take matters into my own hands. So I started baking.
...And baking. And baking. And baking. I brought cinnamon rolls to my coworkers, pies to my family, cupcakes to my friends, and fed my roommates so many fresh baked cookies they literally had to cut me off. "I can't have this many desserts around the house, Heather. You should just sell them. Get them out of here". And so I did!
In 2014 I bought a table at a local vegan market, came up with a name based off of my favorite Misfits song, baked a crapload of treats, and the rest is history. This was truly never meant to be a business, and now that it is, I can't imagine my life any other way. It's been eight years and they have truly been the best of my whole life. Not only that--these years of expressing myself through baking have saved me from some serious mental health and addiction issues I'd been dealing with previously. Baking has given me a reason to wake up in the morning, and reason to live.
In 2019 after running PPMD as a one woman show for five whole years, I met a wonderful human named Christopher who moved to Chicago from STL to help me finally follow through with my dream of opening my very own bakery storefront. Up until then I had moved from shared kitchen to shared kitchen and sold my treats at various popup events around Chicago, but was desperately needing some stability and support so I could grow. I started a gofundme to raise funds, and with the help of my amazing customers and my incredible partner, I was finally able to open up my own shop. In the past couple of years, Christopher has become an inherent part of this business and I feel lucky every single day to be working beside my best friend. We also hired an amazing and incredibly hard working fellow baker named Brenda and a wonderful human named Sam to handle payroll/taxes and our small but mighty team spends every week baking up hundreds and hundreds of vegan treats!!
Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for supporting this little dream of mine!
xoxo
-Heather