Halloween — the day for costuming, candy and general creepiness. Favorite holiday of “City Lights” senior producer Kim Drobes, the spooky celebration is beloved by many, including Atlanta baker Ana Arriaga of the Ghoul Next Door Bakery. Her online and pop-up shop specializes in scary themed treats, and she provides them year-round. Drobes caught up with Arriaga via Zoom to hear more about her ghoulish gourmandise.
Interview highlights:
On the spooky offerings, fun vibes and bright future of Ghoul Next Door:
“A favorite that has been around since 2020 is the ‘Camp Crystal Cookie.’ It’s a s’more cookie with graham crackers and Hershey bars and roasted marshmallows, like you’re by a campfire, waiting for Jason to creep up on you,” said Arriaga. “We have also one of the cookies that I featured at [Atlanta] Food and Wine [Festival] this year, which was ‘American Psycho.’ It was a bacon, bourbon and toffee cookie. Kind of like that Americana, everything-has-bacon-in-it feel, with a little bit of bourbon. And all the cookies are oversized; they’re half-pound cookies, so they all have a lot of good treats inside and on top, and very exciting textures and flavors.”
“I want to eventually have a brick and mortar, that you kind of get the full experience of what Ghoul Next Door is, where it’s a little haunted, spooky vibe, but not scary. The children are really important to me, so I’m not trying to scare them off, or any adults either,” said Arriaga. “But you know, something that’s a little more immersive and gives you the feel of Halloween all year.”
From a self-taught home baker to a full-time professional:
“I grew up in a household where we always celebrated holidays and baked a lot of goodies for them, and so I would usually take over the baking portion of the holidays and make brownies and cakes and whatnot,” Arriaga recalled. “In 2011, I needed a creative outlet and decided that I would give my shot at decorating cakes, and I kind of just taught myself from watching TV shows and online, and I went from there to a side business.”
“In 2020 I moved to Atlanta and five days later everything shut down for the pandemic … So my job prospects had kind of dwindled a little bit. A lot of people weren’t hiring at the time, and I thought, ‘You know, I can already bake, and it’s already something that I think would do well. People need some comfort during the pandemic. They need some treats to rely on.’ And so I decided to just go full force into baking.”
On competing in the 2020 Dessert Wars competition in Atlanta:
“It was a very last-minute thing. I think they had posted about it probably on Instagram and somebody had seen it and said, ‘Hey, you should probably try and enter in this,'” Arriaga recounted. “I think I had just missed the cutoff … and I decided to enter in my information and they called me that night to say, ‘Hey, yeah, we’re gonna take you.’ So I had about a week to prepare, I want to say it was like a thousand samples in my first year of business to try and compete at Dessert Wars. So that was a big undertaking, but it was very exciting … It went really well. I was in the top 10 for ‘People’s Choice’ in 2020, and then the next year I was in the top 10 for ‘Judges’ Choice.'”
More on Ghoul Next Door, its online shop and upcoming events can be found at www.ghoulnextdoorbakeshop.com.
