When Chloe Sexton bakes a batch of cookies, look out.
“The average chocolate chip cookie your mom made was about two ounces on a good day,” Sexton says. “Ours are around seven.”
Sexton’s giant cookies are the signature item for her online business BluffCakes.
People love them. “I think it’s just the shock … or awe of it. People’s stomachs are bigger than their eyes. Like when you go to Disney World. You eat far more than you could on a regular day. It dazzles you a bit. And you eat it all.”
Sexton counts some big names, including celebrity Jessica Simpson, as giant cookie customers.
A native of Gainesville, Florida, Sexton, 27, discovered her knack for baking after she made molasses cookies at 14 and began entering baking competitions. But “baker’’ wasn’t her original ambition. “I was going to be the next Anderson Cooper. It was journalism all the way.”
She was a producer for WREG News Channel 3 after moving to Memphis. Seeing one of her cakes, a colleague asked her to make one for her. “People followed me because she shared it on Instagram.”
Sexton discovered journalism wasn’t it. “It wasn’t going to make me happy. The hours were a lot of it, but the biggest portion was mental health. It was taking a huge toll on me. Our highest crime hours were the ones I was working. My assignment was to send photographers to knock on people’s doors on the worst days of their lives.”
She got a job in marketing as a content specialist. But her husband, Tyler Sexton, a Memphis food and beverage industry veteran, created bluffcakes.com as a wedding present. After losing their jobs during the pandemic, the Sextons focused on BluffCakes. People had trouble finding “decent baked goods,” so Chloe promoted her products on social media. And it took off.
She posted videos on TikTok. “My platform was growing. I had reached at least 50,000 followers [she now has 400,000] by August 2020.”
Chloe began raising money for movements with her baking. “We raised funds for the George Floyd memorial fund … and for the local chapter of Black Lives Matter.”
She lost customers but gained more. “If your money comes with hatred, I don’t want it. I made that abundantly clear.”
And, she says, “We went viral on TikTok the first time for doing that. The same thing happened when I offered free delivery for Biden-themed cupcakes during the election.”
Chloe began playing around with her giant cookies recipe and put the first ones on social media on January 1st, 2020. “Somewhere around the end of January the cookies went viral.” Her husband called while she was doing a live video and said, “You have no idea what is happening now. Orders won’t stop coming in.”
“It didn’t stop for 48 hours. It ended up being around 700 orders. About 14,000 cookies.”
By March, Chloe made BluffCakes her full-time job. In addition to her chocolate chip and other standbys, she created new cookies, including the Tipsy George, a collaboration with Shotwell Candy Co. “This one is a brown sugar-based cookie dough with pecans and chocolate chips. In the center is the Shotwell bourbon maple pecan caramel.”
Chloe and Tyler, general manager of the upcoming Big Bad Breakfast, and two employees, now work out of Memphis Kitchen Co-Op. “We’re doing about 1,200 cookies a week now. And we’re selling them out so fast every single week.”
They did an Easter cookie order for Simpson, who had a “Honey, I Shrunk the Easter Bunny”-themed celebration, Chloe says. “We are working on a custom order today. This is for Lance Bass from NSYNC. They’re for a baby shower.”
Why did Chloe choose BluffCakes as her business name? “I love everything about Bluff City. We had already known for a long time Memphis was going to be our forever home and I was fully invested in that.”
