Kate Batchelor is the extraordinary baker and proud owner of Batches Bake Shop at 321 Dundurn St S in Hamilton, a most welcome addition to the Kirkendall neighbourhood.
She was inspired from an early age by her Grandfather’s legacy. He had operated Gerry’s Pure Food Bakery in Milton, and in retirement baked birthday cakes and made gingerbread houses for Kate and her brother during the holidays.
Having graduated with her Diploma in Baking & Pastry Arts Management from George Brown College, she was perfectly positioned to fill the vacuum created when the longstanding Cake & Loaf Bakery shut down in October, 2023.
Kate opened Batches as a pop-up shop at the same location in November, 2023 and has been there ever since, offering a carefully curated variety of baked goods from cookies, cakes, and scones to soup and chicken pot pie.
Van Hansen interviewed Kate Batchelor at Batches Bake Shop in November, 2024.
Hansen: What was the first thing you ever baked?
Batchelor: It was the Betty Crocker box cake mixes and I made so many of them. I was like the family cake baker at eight or nine years old and my dad would supervise and then taste test but yeah it all started out of a box.
Hansen: Batches Bake Shop is a “from scratch bakery”. What does that mean exactly?
Batchelor: It means that all of our ingredients come in individually and we put them all together so nothing is coming out of a bucket and nothing is coming in pre-made. We make it all in-house from scratch, fresh, daily or every other day.
Hansen: Okay and where do you get your ingredients?
Batchelor: That depends on the season. We try to keep things as local as possible, so all through the summer we get things from the Waterdown Farmer's Market when we are there on Saturday.
That's why you'll see our menu change up seasonally, because when I can't get the produce, I can't produce the stuff.
Hansen: From a personal POV what does Baking mean to you?
Batchelor: Baking to me is love, right? That's how my family shows love. People cook for you, people bake for you.
Hansen: So you mentioned that baking was a hobby and a stress reliever, and that all sounds like great stuff.
Batchelor: That's how I started. I used to bake at home all the time, all through my university degree I baked and that was how I turned off my brain at the end of the day. I'd pop out a batch of cinnamon rolls or cook up a big pot of chili. So it was feeding me but also feeding my soul. Now it’s not as much a stress reliever but I still love it.
Hansen: Tell me about your Grandfather.
Batchelor: My Grandpa had a bakery when my Mom and her brothers were kids. I never got to see it—the shop closed before I was born.
But he used to make all of our birthday cakes and we would go and have sleepovers and there would be cinnamon buns in the morning. And at Christmas he would make gingerbread houses, personalized gingerbread houses for my brother and I. And so I just remember that was how he spread joy to our family was through creating everything.
Hansen: So you grew up in Milton. How did you end up in Hamilton?
Batchelor: When I finished university I moved back home for a while.
During that time I was working at a restaurant in Oakville and I had an epiphany… I realized that food service and hospitality is where I'm supposed to be.
And I started my first bakery out of my Mom's kitchen, which was a terrible idea because I really had no idea what I was doing at that point.
So after completing the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Program at Mohawk, I studied Baking and Pastry Arts at George Brown College. We had to do an internship, and I wanted to do it closer to home.
And I remembered a girl that I knew in high school who worked at the Cake and Loaf Bakery. She put me in touch with the owners and it just kind of blossomed and I worked for them for several years.
When they decided to close they asked if I wanted to rent the building and that’s how I ended up here.
It was a little bit like coming home because I already worked here for so many years, but never during the day. I never got to meet anybody, so now being able to meet the community is really lovely.
