48.0°,
Overcast A 'sweet' addition to Franklin Square: The Sweet Life Bake Shop celebrates its grand opening
Owners Nicole Minor and Jose Velasquez officially debuted their new bakery The Sweet Life Bake Shop on May 12 and are excited to offer quality desserts to the Franklin Square community.
Minor, 37, said she and her husband Velasquez have each been baking for roughly 15 years. The Freeport High School alumna discovered her passion for cake decorating after graduating from Niagara University, where she studied theater and fine arts.
She got a job in a bakery and realized this is what she wanted to do as a career. After over a decade of perfecting her craft working in carious local Italian bakeries, she opened her first dessert shop in East Patchogue.
After selling, she and her husband purchased the former Lulu’s Bakery on 988 Hempstead Turnpike in Franklin Square and made it their own.
“This is the best way I can imagine being able to express my creativity, and then eat it,” Minor said. “(Velasquez) is in the kitchen and just has a genuine passion for what he does — and together we wanted to be able to make magic.”
Velasquez, 41, was born and raised in El Salvador and immigrated to the United States in 2013. Shortly after moving to the United States, he landed a job as a dishwasher in an Oceanside bakery where he got his first exposure to the profession.
He saw this as an opportunity to hone his skills and develop into an expert baker. Velasquez spent years perfecting his recipes and continues to produce the best baked goods he can.
Some of The Sweet Life Bake Shop’s specialties include their custom buttercream cakes, whipped cream cakes, mousse cakes and miscellaneous items such as passionfruit tres leches and Velasquez’s croissants, which have become a community favorite so far.
“We can do anything you want — as long as it’s sugar, we’re down, we are game,” Minor said. “We want everybody to be as happy about their desserts as we are.”
