By Carrie Moritz, Gazette
Even before pastry chef and cake artist April Austin graduated from Garretson High School in 1992, she knew she was going into the culinary arts.
"I've always loved to bake, ever since I was little I was making a mess in my mom's kitchen," Austin said.
The daughter of Gail and Steve Austin of Garretson, April made her name at C.J. Callaways, the upscale steakhouse, event center, and restaurant that was popular in Sioux Falls for 20 years, baking her way to success and gathering a large following.
The clientele didn't allow her to disappear when Callaways closed in early 2019. "People were finding me and messaging me to do their cakes," she said.
After partnering with Chef Jeni & Co. for the past three years, Austin recently opened her own location in Sioux Falls with a gathering space for events such as showers, business meetings, rehearsal dinners, and more. The space is on East 10th Street in the Dacotah Town Centre, an area just south of Hy-Vee that also includes Tokyo and Dacotah Bank.
"I wanted to make a cool spot for people to gather," she said, as she has always liked a more personable atmosphere.
Her first job was at the Red Roost Cafe in Garretson while in high school. During that time, she worked after school and on Saturday mornings.
"I had friends who were serving there and they told JoAnn [Etrheim] 'Well April loves to cook and you should call her,'" Austin said.
It was at the Red Roost that she noted the gathering aspect, as the local farmers gathered for daily coffee during her shifts.
"It was a fun way to meet people in Garretson," she said.
When the need for a larger space for both her business and Chef Jeni's occurred earlier this year, she decided to merge both aspects in her own building and put that intention into her search.
The space officially opened for business in September, and Austin is excited to go full-steam ahead.
She attended Mitchell Technical Institute for Culinary Arts (now MTI's Culinary Academy of South Dakota) and graduated in 1994. She initially opted to take the Chef track, leaving thoughts of baking behind.
"It was just more commercial [baking]," she said, pointing out that it was focused more on large-scale bakery operations such as donuts and bread. She preferred to leave that type of baking to others. She began cooking in cafes and steakhouses in Mitchell and Sioux Falls, working the line.
Other than the Red Roost, she hadn't done a whole lot of cooking prior to attending culinary school, and she had some advice for anyone considering the restaurant business:
"Go find the best restaurant you can find and work there, because that's going to be your best picture of how it's going to work. Find a good place, work there to see how it runs" before attending school for it, she said. She believes she would have taken a much different path if she had done that prior to heading to the Institute.
However, she knows that it was working the line at CJ Callaways for three years that set her on her current path. During that time, Callaways' owner, James Olson, saw her interest in baking. When Olson opened a gourmet food store and classroom, Austin was asked to work with a colleague, Amy, on making desserts and teaching cooking classes. It was her colleague who taught her how to make wedding cakes, and when the store closed, Olson opted to bring Austin back to the Callaways building to exclusively make confections. After working in a small area Austin referred to as a "cubby" for two years, Olson built her a large catering kitchen that she could then make wedding cakes and desserts in.
"It was called a catering kitchen but it didn't have any catering equipment in there," Austin said with a laugh. "I think he just felt bad that he put me in that cubbyhole and he just loved to build."
She also met her husband, Nick Rerick, at Callaways. He worked in the kitchen as a manager, and now that she's expanded and is offering more, Austin is excited that he can join her in this endeavor.
While the cakes and confections will still be the mainstay of Austin's focus, the gathering space will be offering full catering during the event and clean up after for up to 50 people seated or 80 socially. Any event will include four hours of rental along with food and drinks from a custom-made menu.
She held an Open House this past Tuesday, where visitors were able to sample some of the wares. One of her upcoming events will be a pop-up shop in mid-December that she has run the past two years with Chef Jeni. During that event they'll have cookie decorating kits, lefse, hot cocoa bombs, and more for sale. The pop-up shop idea came about during the pandemic, where both Austin and Chef Jeni had to pivot on their offerings. Austin was amazed at the support shown to them during that time by the people in the area.
When it came to naming her new space, Austin originally thought she'd keep the same name, Cakes and Confections by Chef April.
"My mom always told me, 'You should be Chef April,'" Austin said, referring to naming the space, because that was how Callaways marketed her. Despite being initially resistant to the idea, she decided to go with it, and re-named her business Chef April, with the tagline Cakes, Confections, and Celebrations. The Celebrations part helps to market the event space without calling it that, she said.
She is thankful her mother gave her the push, and is also grateful for the free advertising Gail gives her daughter. When speaking about the supportiveness of the Sioux Falls community, Austin also spoke about how Garretson has also continued to feel like home with the support of Garretson community members. People still know her here, and part of that is because of Gail, who can be found regularly talking about her daughter.
Chef April can be found on-line at ByChefApril.com as well as on Facebook at Chef April Cakes.
