NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Local baking aficionado’s Gramma’s Hands Sweetery received a Ruthies Award Nomination earlier this week in the dessert category, according to Gramma’s Hands owner and founder MoNique Ivory. She said the Ruthies Award nomination “is awesome,” and adds to several accomplishments Gramma’s Hands has achieved while in operation. Ivory said these accomplishments include several awards that have been won by a staple menu item of the sweetery – their ‘Good Good’ cinnamon rolls.
Ivory said the menu of Gramma’s Hands is updated year-round with new and interesting sweets designed to delight the public. She said though she likes bringing new food to the table often, however, there are several desserts that have become what she and her husband refer to as “The Trinity,” as they have been crowd favorites that set her business apart from other sweets shops in Middle Tennessee. Ivory said this trinity consists of their award-winning cinnamon rolls, as well as peach cobbler and southern banana pudding.
Ivory said she and her husband have been operating different iterations of what would become Gramma’s Hands since 2008, though they hadn’t been treating it like a business. Ivory said things changed, however, when she was given furlough in 2018 by her job working for the federal government. She said it was then she began experimenting at her husband’s request with different recipes that would become the first of Gramma’s Trinity, their cinnamon rolls.
“I would never make cinnamon rolls, but he would always say, ‘I wish I had my grandmother’s cinnamon rolls,’” Ivory said. “From there I tested, oh my goodness, tons of recipes and they never seemed to be quite right.”
Ivory said after about a year of troubleshooting with her taste buds, she finally created a recipe “that was worthy, but didn’t quite have the icing that I wanted.” She said she didn’t want to use the industry standard recipe of cheese-based icing, and that with her husband’s help, the two concocted what would become their signature Good Good icing.
“This is where the ‘Good Good’ comes in, the icing is called ‘Good Good’ so the whole cinnamon roll is called ‘Good Good,’” Ivory said.
Ivory said every time Gramma’s Hands goes out, they try to have a specialty cinnamon roll made as well. She said past variations of these specialty cinnamon rolls have included peach cobbler, apple, chocolate, coffee, sweet potato, and tres leches flavors. Ivory said it was shortly after perfecting their Good Good recipe that they included the peach cobbler and banana pudding into their trinity of sweet staples, providing customers with cinnamon, fruity, and sweet but not overpowering options.
Ivory said that during COVID, her sweetery began attending public and church events in a pop-up tent or inside different public areas far more often. Ivory said after doing this for a year, she and her husband decided they had enough traction to warrant them to “jump on the bandwagon” and purchase a food truck. She said though they had been serving sweets before that season, it was during COVID that they were for the first time making a “substantial amount of money.”
Ivory said however, it would be after she was interviewed by Nancy DeGennaro of the Daily News Journal in 2021 that business really began to pick up for Gramma’s Hands. If you want to taste what the buzz is about, Ivory said Gramma’s Hands will be serving at World Outreach Church two Saturdays in a row, Oct. 19 and Oct. 26. For more, visit grammas-hands.com.
