With sweet treats and an even sweeter story, Sweet Tooth Bakery is easily a hidden gem in State College.

The bakery, founded by Cheri Christian and her husband in 1993, was born out of a love for being together as a family and baking. For Christian, baking was always a passion of hers that started when she was a young child.

“My grandmothers were from Hungary, and they lived in the same town as us, so I would bake nut rolls with one of them,” Christan said. “We would bake all day. My other grandmother also liked to bake, so that’s where I got started.”

In junior high, Christian started baking small cakes for close friends and spent a lot of time learning from her mentor, Marie. While Christian and her now-husband were dating, they discovered they had a mutual love for baking that actually bonded them closer together.

“While we were dating, I was in Pittsburgh and he would send me cream cheese brownies in the mail,” Christian said.

The original building that Christian and her husband bought in 1992 needed a lot of work and remodeling in its original form. What was supposed to take six weeks to remodel ended up taking six months.

Sweet Tooth Bakery officially opened in 1993 but closed temporarily because Christian and her family decided to invest in another company. Unfortunately, the building itself had too many repairs.

The Christians moved back in 2014 and returned to Sweet Tooth Bakery that year. The bakery is entirely family-owned and run, but luckily, her two children love to bake as well.

“I make what I can by myself, and if I need help, my son Devin comes and helps out,” Christian said. ”My son usually just does some deliveries for me, and he is my business partner with Nittany Balloons, which is in the same building.”

Sweet Tooth Bakery features sweets ranging from cookies to cakes to chocolates. Although it offers a large variety of baked goods, Christian’s all-time favorite dessert to make still the nut rolls she used to make with her grandmothers. 

“They were the traditional Hungarian foods she had for every event, baptism, christening, funeral, and wedding. It brings me back memories of being with my grandparents,” Christian said.

Her favorite cakes to decorate, though, are those that look like other foods. Christian saaid she enjoys the challenge to make these baked goods look realistic to trick people into thinking it’s real food.

Sweet Tooth Bakery’s most popular baked goods, however, are the homemade cookies with photos on them. Graduation is a specifically busy time for the bakery when individual baking requests are particularly a popular demand.

Sweet Tooth Bakery isn’t the only Christian family-run business in State College. Devin Christian, Christian’s son, owns Nittany Balloons. Years later, Cheri and Devin became certified for balloon art together and now create beautiful balloon art to accompany their delicious baked goods.

“When [Devin] was little, I had a little TV with a VHS and I bought him and his sister balloons to play with, and he was very good at balloon art,” Christian said. ”We went to our first convention in Las Vegas when he was 12. He was one of the youngest people there, and he picked it up so quickly.”

Christian said she wants everyone in the State College area to know that even if you do leave the State College area, you can always order your piece of State College from Sweet Tooth Bakery through mail delivery.

Next time you’re craving chocolate cake or a bouquet of chocolate chip cookies, stop by Sweet Tooth Bakery. After all, it’s only a stone’s dough away.