Who will take home the prize for the third annual Macon Baking Week?

A line of people wrapped around the bakery, and extended out the door, as people anxiously awaited a taste of delicious white velvet cake.

It was the first annual Macon Baking week in 2023, and Layers owners Reia and Steven Collins had not anticipated the sheer amount of people who would come to the shop to try their dish for the competition. They were forced to send people away when they ran out of cakes, put a sign up on the door, and asked them to come back when the next batch was ready.

“That’s it for our baking week,” Steven Collins thought. “Nobody’s going to come back.”

It was less than an hour when everyone flooded back in, said Steven Collins, who sees himself as the bakery’s “hype man,” said. They ended up winning the first annual Macon Baking week that year, and are the only bakery to win it going into the third annual Macon Baking week, which ends July 27. 

For this year’s competition, two-time Star Baker Reia Collins is spotlighting peaches and cream cake for the competition. 

Peaches and cream has inspired songs and candy, Reia Collins said, but she put her own, local twist on the dessert. With handpicked peaches from Dickeys Farms, homemade yellow poundcake, and whipped cream cheese icing, Layers peaches and cream cake looks to stun the competition for the third time. 

There is a moment, Steve Collins explained, when you first bite into one of Layers’ creations. 

“You take that fork full and you put it in your mouth, to a person, they close their eyes, their head goes back, the fork goes up, and they just savor that flavor,” Steve Collins said. “It just makes an impact immediately and you can tell it in their faces and personality.”

Macon Baking week is more than just a competition for the two-time champs. There are 16 restaurants in the competition this year, including some new faces. For Steven and Reia Collins, this means an opportunity to try new things and meet more people. 

What goes beyond the competitive aspect is the camaraderie in sharing passions with the other bakers involved, and being able to highlight the bright, positive aspects in the community that often get overshadowed with the negative according to Steven Collins.

“We kind of build a support group of the bakers and the makers here in town and it just reminds us we’re not alone in our little bakery on Vineville. Even though we are by ourselves out here on the street we have a group of people in town that understand what we’re going through,” Steve Collins said.

Is the third time the charm for this beloved bagel shop?

Macon Bagel owners, husband and wife Lauren Bone and Patrick Rademaker, enter a dish that is “close to home,” Lauren Bone said.

Honoring their Florida roots, they bring a classic key lime pie into the race. Bone explained her husband used to work on a citrus farm in Florida and the dish is a nod to their Floridian heritage. 

Preserving the simplicity of the dish, there is no twist involved. They use their own homemade crust and freshly zested limes. Nothing beats the classic traditional key lime pie, according to Lauren Bone. 

This will be the third time Macon Bagels has participated in Baking Week, but the first year they chose to spotlight a sweet dish over savory. However, with their refreshing and summery dish they think it could be their year to win, but along with Steven Collins, Bone agrees competition is not the true intent of Baking Week.

“I see it as more of a collaboration versus a competition,” Bone said.

If Macon Bagels does win, Lauren Bone will be rewarded with a pie to the face.

An avid participant shares her perspective

Kate Long, a born and raised Maconite, used Macon Bagels key lime pie as her birthday cake. Key lime pie was her grandpa’s favorite, whose birthday falls on the same week as hers. Using it as her birthday cake was a way to honor him. So far, it is the best dish she tasted in this year’s competition, Long said.

“It just was like the perfect amount of tartness, and the ratio of filling to crust was so good,” Long said.

This is Long’s first time participating in Macon Baking Week, and she is trying to fill up every stamp she can in her passport. With five stamps, people can choose a Macon Baking set. With ten stamps, people get a t-shirt. To get the prizes, people drop their passports off at Macon’s Downtown Visitor Center, and vote for their favorite dish by scanning the QR code on their passports. The fun for Long lies in the action of supporting small businesses and sharing time with your family.

“It’s really great to push folks to go and circulate all the small businesses, because we obviously all have our favorites. But it’s important to have a plethora of choices for a good community to have so many choices,” Long said.

Long is a third grade teacher at the Academy for Classical Education, and Macon Baking Week will be her last week of summer vacation until she goes back to work. Participating in baking week has been a “really fun way to end the summer,” Long said.

This story was originally published July 24, 2025 at 4:47 PM.