On her TikTok account, Chloe Sexton, owner of BluffCakes, revealed that she’s in a bit of a dilemma. Google her name, and you get her TikTok, her cookies, clips of her on The Kelly Clarkson Show, a host of articles, from Today.com to yours truly, the Memphis Flyer. But Google “Chloe Sexton book,” and you end up with some results leading to an array of adult novels by another “Chloe Sexton.” “Turns out I’m not the only Chloe Sexton on the planet. Go figure,” she says in her video. “Only 7 billion people on the planet, but all the 7 billion people whittled down to make this happen to me.”
Fortunately, we’re not here to talk about that Chloe Sexton’s literary achievement. Rather, we’re here to talk about Memphis’ own Chloe Sexton’s new cookbook, Big Yum: Supersized Cookies for Over-the-Top Cravings, released yesterday by Page Street Publishing, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers. The cookbook, Sexton says, might just be the biggest book deal to come out of Memphis.
Sexton first caught the attention of Page Street two years ago through her TikTok account (@chloebluffcakes), where she shares her personal life and her love of baking — specifically baking large cookies for her online business. Since then, the account has grown to 2.1 million followers and 75.5 million likes, and Sexton has even opened her brick-and-mortar storefront in Germantown. Through it all, over those two years, Sexton had also been developing Big Yum.
The cookbook has 52 giant cookie recipes, most of which were created just for this cookbook. “We’ve got at least two or three recipes in this book that we not only ship internationally, but yes, we offer at our storefront here in Germantown,” she says. “But the rest of them — other than those like two or three — are completely new. We’ve never shipped them. We’ve never sold them in a store. They are completely organic to the book, so you’re gonna make them yourself and be surprised.”
Though the baker admits she hasn’t “done a ton of teaching people,” her start as a home-baker has served as an advantage while creating the cookbook. “I did not at all come from a background of a pastry degree or go to the Culinary Institute of America,” says Sexton, who worked as a news producer before turning to baking full time. “I had to start from my own kitchen, and have been baking from 14 years old on. So I really know what does and doesn’t work in a home kitchen.”
But the cookbook isn’t just recipes, she says. “I’m sharing my life in the book. The people who are going to buy this book — they know me. They followed me for a long time. A lot of my content has been about the business and it’s been about the cookies and promoting this thing that I’ve built, but more than that, there is an audience that’s gonna buy this cookbook because they watched me lose my mom and watch me actively take on a role at becoming my sister’s sole guardian, and I had an opportunity to really dive deeper into more things maybe they don’t know about me.
“I want them to see that it matters to me that I’m having a conversation with the reader,” Sexton continues. “I’m not gonna put out a cookbook and pretend like, oh, none of that really, really difficult stuff ever happened. No, it’s present. We are gonna talk about it. And I want them to know that there’s not going to be a chapter where I just stop talking about what made me me, what put me on the map on social media.”
In fact, when conceiving these recipes, Sexton looked for inspiration in what brought up her best and favorite memories. One cookie is named after her late mom Jenny Wren; another, the Dreamsicle cookie, takes her back to her childhood in Florida, chasing after the ice cream truck in hopes she could score one of those orange frozen treats. “When I normally bake for shipping or for our bakery, it’s all about what the consumer wants,” she says. “Whereas the book is more about what I want to share.”
Among the things she wants to share is her pride for the place she calls home: Memphis. “[The book deal] is definitely something that makes me really conscious about representing the city that I’m proud of,” she says.
In honor of the book’s release, Novel is hosting a launch party Friday, September 22nd, at Restaurant Iris. The chefs at Iris will offer an intimate two-course dinner, and Sexton will do a live cooking demonstration, preparing a vanilla cheesecake with a berry compote. Tickets ($75) are required for this event and include a copy of Big Yum and the opportunity to meet the author and have your book signed. A virtual option is available for $23.99 and includes a signed copy of Big Yum and a link to watch the live cooking demonstration. Find more information about the event and purchase tickets here.
Big Yum: Supersized Cookies for Over-the-Top Cravings is available at all major bookstores and at Novel.
BluffCakes is at 7850 Poplar Ave., Ste. 24, Germantown; bluffcakes.com.
