Swedish bakery prepares wedding cakes, desserts, breads
By Nancy Brumback, Contributing Writer
Worcester—Planning a wedding, Easter dinner, brunch or just need a dessert?
Crown Bakery has been providing the cakes, pastries, breads and cookies for such events since 1960 from the same blue-and-gold store on Gold Star Boulevard.
Ake Lundstrom landed in Worcester from Sweden and opened Crown Bakery in the building whose colors reflect the Swedish flag. Jon Lundstrom, Ake’s son, has been running the business since 1994, and about 15 years ago added a café with freshly-made breakfast and lunch sandwiches, soups and salads.
Crown Bakery’s main business, however, remains being a full retail bakery, with everything made fresh from scratch. The choices include about 10 types of bread, breakfast Danish pastries, Swedish buns, cookies, petit fours and Swedish coffee rings, a house specialty.
Crown’s wedding cakes are famous in the area.
Lundstrom noted that the look of those wedding cakes is changing a bit. “We are making more rustic-looking cakes, sometimes with wild flowers as trim,” for brides who want to get away from the formal tiered cake.
Crown offers cake tastings for couples right in the bakery. “We have all kinds of flavors—our specialty rainbow cake which is gluten-free, regular golden cake, red velvet, carrot cake, chocolate, whatever they want. We also have them taste different icings that go with each cake flavor. And we show them photos of a wide variety of cake designs, with colors that can match the wedding party’s outfits,” Lundstrom said.
He suggests couples place orders for wedding cakes about six weeks in advance. The bakery turns out 1,500 to 2,000 wedding cakes a year, and he noted Crown is competitively priced on them.
Easter is one of Crown’s biggest cake holidays, and the bakery offers a variety of bunny- and egg-shaped cakes, along with cupcakes and cookies with Easter decorations. Swedish semla Lenten buns are an alternative to hot cross buns.
Custom cakes for other special occasions—birthdays, retirements, anniversaries—are also a specialty.
“We are doing a lot of theme birthday cakes with cartoon and superhero characters for children’s birthday parties. Some of them are almost the size of a wedding cake.
“We can create a cake with just about any theme—we made one that looked like barbells—though the cost of the labor does drive up the price. But we can do it.”
Swedish pastries are another draw for Crown’s customers. In addition to coffee rings and braids, and cinnamon, cardamom and raisin buns, there are always traditional Swedish pastries.
“Mazarins are filled with almond paste with white glaze on top. When you see mazarins, you see a map of Sweden in your mind. Our almond sticks are also very Swedish, a light flaky dough with almond paste. And kringla is a puff pastry dough” shaped something like a pretzel, he said.
Breads are baked daily and include white bread, Swedish rye, six-grain, and Irish soda bread, good for St. Patrick’s Day. There are also rolls and muffins. Gluten-free and sugar-free breads are available.
The Crown Bakery & Café is located at 133 Gold Star Blvd. (Route 12) in Worcester. It’s open from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, and is closed Sundays. Photos of some of the cake options are on the website, www.crownbakeryandcafe.com, or call 508-852-0746 to discuss an order.