Schools
Meet Whiz Kid: Colleen Suratt
Teen's passion for baking and ease with customers makes good chemistry for local bakery.
Name: Colleen Suratt, 17
School:
Accomplishments: This young baker has been an important player in developing two wholesale lines at Sweet N’ Sinful, a business in Avondale Estates that specializes in custom cake designs and confections.
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Most recently the bakery launched a dark and milk chocolate line of brownies now featured in Whole Foods in three of its stores in the Atlanta area including the Ponce de Leon Avenue location.
Getting the brownie product ready for Whole Foods was a long
process, said proprietor Layne Lee.
Find out what's happening in Decatur-Avondale Estateswith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Although the recipe had been developed for some time, the production, branding, labeling and packaging had to be worked out and product demos in the stores had to be staffed. Colleen was there to help with all of that, Lee said.
“I had always been interested in baking,” Colleen said. “I
was 13 when I started helping with the Christmas cookie decorating parties at the bakery.”
Gradually she began baking, first cookies and then cakes, following Lee’s own recipes and working behind the counter.
Sweet N’ Sinful also bakes, packages and mails about 50 gift boxes of cookies a week for a company that sends them as a thank-you to their clients.
“She is so quick to pick things up,” Lee said. “As a taste tester, she can tell when someone’s product is off with its ingredients; her scientific brain just picks it up. She’s great with the customers, telling people about products and working demos. A couple of weeks ago she delivered a wedding cake for us.”
Colleen is president of her senior class at Decatur High and
co-president of the National Honor Society. She has been taking Spanish lessons since kindergarten and assists with teaching her peers in Spanish class. Recently she spent a month in Spain enhancing
her language skills.
She’s ridden horses since she was 7 years old and specializes in Saddle Seat, a style of English horseback riding designed to show off the horse’s trotting.
She is interested in pursuing a medical career and has plans to major in biology in college.
