A Kitchen Full of Heart 

Jowin’s Kitchen is baking memories — one gooey butter cake at a time.

Entering Jowin’s Kitchen feels like stepping into a cherished memory. Vivid yet dreamlike, it’s a place you won’t want to leave once you’re seated — a crossroads between nostalgia and the present. The comforting aroma of sugar and butter clings to the air as if the space itself had absorbed years of baking despite only opening six months ago, and the dreamy purple walls are ornamented with black-and-white photos of owner Jean Nicklas’s family, each frame capturing moments of love, laughter, and baking traditions passed down.   

“People always ask me who they are and where their pictures were taken,” Nicklas said. “It’s just funny the details other people pick up that I may or may not be able to tell them about, but that makes it feel very familial … all these touches of people here.”   

That sense of history and heart is infused into every corner of Jowin’s Kitchen, especially in its signature treat: the gooey butter cake. This decadent dessert has a unique, two-layer structure — a soft, dense, and slightly chewy base made from butter and flour, topped with a sweet, creamy layer that’s almost custard-like in texture.   

While the earliest gooey butter cake originated in Nicklas’s hometown of St. Louis back in the 1930s, for her, it’s more than a regional delicacy — it’s a family treasure that dates to her childhood, when she baked alongside her mother (nicknamed “Jowin”) and grandmother.   

“We always enjoyed baking together,” said Nicklas. “My grandmother was famous for her cookies actually, but gooey butter cake was one other thing we had growing up in South St. Louis. It was a very popular dessert.”   

Those early experiences of sharing the kitchen with her loved ones planted the seeds of a passion that eventually blossomed into Jowin’s Kitchen, even if the journey took longer than expected. Nicklas continued baking and cake decorating into adulthood, but only as a hobby while working in the communications field. Then, during the upheaval of the pandemic, she decided to make the leap by quitting her day job and laying the foundation for her bakery.   

“We decided if we were going to do it, now is the time,” she said. “So we started small, licensed ourselves as a home bakery, and began selling it at farmers markets and festivals and events around town, and it just went great.”   

One aspect that allowed Jowin’s Kitchen to grow in its first few years was CoMo Cooks Shared Kitchen, a commercial kitchen and food business incubator that houses several local vendors, including the COMO Magazine-spotlighted Abby Does Charcuterie, BJ’s Coffee Bar, 2 Odd Dawgs, and The Night Owl Eatery.   

While Nicklas was not a full-time vendor during her time there, she used the space for large orders — most notably during the holiday season, when she received thousands of requests.   

“It was really helpful, not just to bake there, but when I decided to open the [brick-and-mortar] bakery,” she explained. “I knew what equipment I had used there and what I liked, and what I liked about their setup. It was helpful to have worked there to know how to outfit this place when the time came.”  

That time came in early November 2023, during The Loop’s annual Holiday Maker’s Market, when Nicklas was approached by someone who suggested she rent out the vacant Parkade space for her bakery.  

“I kind of laughed them off because that didn’t seem like something that would be possible,” she said. “And then, while I was sitting there working the market, I was looking at it, and you know, I peeked in the window and thought, ‘Maybe that would work.’”  

Soon thereafter, she started making phone calls, and development quickly snowballed. By January 2024, Nicklas had signed the lease for that same space, and with the help of Reinhardt Construction and invaluable advice from others, Jowin’s Kitchen opened its doors in August.  

While opening a physical store has expectedly presented a learning curve for the Jowin’s Kitchen team, Nicklas emphasized that the consistent support from the community and the unwavering help from her children, husband, and extended family has made the transition much more manageable.  

In addition to revamping the space — which included rewiring, replumbing, and more — Nicklas has also continued to expand the menu beyond her family’s traditional St. Louis gooey butter cake, venturing into flavors like turtle and salted caramel and seasonal favorites such as hot cocoa, featuring a chocolate batter base topped with marshmallows. She joked that these seasonal hits often stay longer than planned, that the line-up is becoming far too long, and that hot cocoa could potentially be rebranded into an “Easter egg” flavor come spring.   

These playful, evolving flavors reflect the heart of Jowin’s Kitchen — a place where tradition and creativity converge. As Nicklas experiments with new offerings and continues to refine her menu, the bakery remains grounded in the love and memories that inspired its creation in the first place.  

So what’s next for Jowin’s Kitchen?  

“Well,” Nicklas said with a smile, “what’s next is running our little bakery.”