The Crumbzz Story

First offered to the public in 1999, the Sadler Crumb Cake found a welcome home in the tiny Hudson Valley Hamlet of Highland Falls. Snuggled beneath the shadow of the Appalachian Mountains of upstate New York, this town of 2500 kept their crumb cake secret until 2001, when a New York City resident named Chuck Deller happened upon this "Epicurean Pot of Gold". Deller brought his find back to the City and the secret of the Sadler Crumb Cake was a secret no more.

By 2001, lines of "Caker's" waited anxiously for their chance to enjoy the next, steaming crumb cake, fresh out of the oven. By 2002, over 4,800 slices a week of the Streusel, Chocolate, Apple and Apricot Crumb Cakes were being enjoyed by loyal customers in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut area.

The history of this wonderful family recipe goes back generations to a little town in Austria, where the Sadler's perfected their recipe. The trip to the New World came with the first wave of immigrants. Re-chrisened the "Crumbzz Cake", J Stephen Sadler was the first to introduce the family recipe to the public.

In 2001 J Stephen decided to satisfy the many requests of his out of town customers by shipping his Crumbzz Cakes across the U.S. In 2002 (before websites and Facebook and without any marketing), over one thousand of the family crumb cakes were shipped to enthusiasts nationwide.

Although "organic" had not yet spread into the market, J Stephen instinctively knew that fresh ingredients meant a better product. He assured freshness by purchasing his ingredients from local farmers. J Stephen was also uncomfortable with the growing list of chemicals showing up in the crumb cake ingredients available from his bakery suppliers. In what would later become the norm for organic bakers, J Stephen banned the use of milk with hormones in any of his baked goods.

The Sadler House, home of the first Sadler crumb cake in the New World.

In 2002, growing tired of the long cold winters, J Stephen sold his bakery and moved south. And there the story of this very special crumb cake could have come to an abrupt end, had it not been for a chance encounter eight years later.

After J Stephen left, the new owners discontinued the baking of cakes and the famous little Crumbzz Cake became a wonderful, but distant memory. That is until 2009, when J Stephen ran into an old customer in, of all places, his new hometown Dallas, TX. Stories of the days in Highland Falls eventually got around to those famous crumb cakes and the customer asked if J Stephen would bake a special crumb cake just for him. "I had continued the Crumbzz name making different pastries on a local basis but had not made my family's crumb cake in nine years. Finding my old recipes was a real challenge, but I eventually located them in a dusty old box in my attic. From there it was like riding a bike, once I started, it all came naturally."

Eleven years after the recipe was lost under a pile of dust, J Stephen is busy creating his "once famous" Crumbzz Cake again, with a few new twists. "We're now totally up to date with a web site, Facebook and Twitter pages to better serve our clients. More importantly we now have the capability to be chemical free, using natural and sustainable farming."

Although the new changes have enabled the Crumbzz bakers to evolve the product, the old family recipe, passed down from generation to generation, is still at the heart of every Crumbzz Cake that finds its way into a lucky client's hands.