Desera Moore can fit a lot into a couple of inches of sugary heaven. And she’s certainly done it all. Mini pickleball courts coupled with pickles and wiffle balls for an upcoming pickleball match. Coors, Corona and Jack Daniels bottles for a 21st birthday. Nacho Libre-themed cookies for a baptism. The faces of every Paw Patrol character, in color, for a little boy’s fourth birthday. And you can only imagine the bachelorette cookies. 

While Moore offers a variety of custom-baked goods, she predominantly focuses on sugar cookies and cake balls, which feature flavors such as Oreo, red velvet or chocolate crunch. She delivers her baked goods throughout Dallas and can make virtually any design with seven days’ notice for fresh-baked goods and 10 days’ notice for custom desserts. 

Moore started her business, BAKED in Dallas, out of her home last year after the bakery she worked at became another COVID closure victim. She’d been working in bakeries all of her adult life. Her first job was at a local bakery when she was 17.

“I decided about halfway through college that I wanted to continue in the foodservice industry in some capacity,” Moore says. “Cake decorating was my biggest passion.”

Moore graduated from Dallas Community College with a culinary arts degree, followed by jobs at a string of bakeries before landing at BAKED, a neighborhood bakery in Snider Plaza.  

Run by pastry chef Toni Rivard, the bakery focused on cake balls and artfully decorated cookies. When the brick-and-mortar store closed in 2021 after attempting to go delivery-only during the pandemic, Moore, one of Rivard’s employees and mentees, bought much of the bakery supplies and got to work in her own apartment.

“They closed like six months after I started working there, which was a bummer because I really, really enjoyed working with the lady (Rivard) who owned it, and she was awesome,” Moore says. 

After purchasing Rivard’s equipment and reaching out to some of her clients, Moore created a website and started posting on Instagram to spread the word about the new business. All while planning her own wedding and singing in her wedding band, Dez and Mike, Moore turned BAKED in Dallas to a full-time, at-home business.  

“It was born out of opportunity,” Moore says. “When the business closed, I lost my job and I was trying to find a way to turn it into a positive.”

Moore was able to keep many of Rivard’s clients, servicing the same area that the brick-and-mortar store served. Her delivery-based scratch bakery makes cake balls, cookies and cupcakes, though her custom-iced sugar cookies are the main event. 

BAKED in Dallas sugar cookies are $4.50-$6 each depending on how complicated the design is. 

“It’s all about serving locals and being able to keep people enjoying the desserts that they did before COVID,” Moore says.