Easy Fix Haverhill Ma
Gaetane Eary
As long as I can remember, I have been a professional bowl licker and cookie dough tester. I guess by design that would result in a serious baking addiction. Growing up in the 90s we were not a "home-made" family. My brother and I BEGGED our mom to make cake using only Duncan-Heinz from the box and we could always tell the difference between that and the kind you could pick out at the grocery store or worse "home-made" (I am seriously not kidding about that part LOL). I am uncertain as to what type of sorcery goes on inside those red and blue boxes but that is a conversation for another day. We were however, 100% certain that the box cake, was in fact better than any cake you could buy at Market Basket.
My passion for baking probably started when I got my very first Easy Bake Oven. I vividly remember walking into Toys R Us with a pocket full of report card cash and picking out several packages of "cookies" or "cakes" to bake. I could not believe I had my very own oven. Can you imagine how powerful we all felt cooking with lightbulbs back in 1993 when things were easy before we had to learn to use a real oven and follow a real recipe?
In middle school we needed to create a project displaying the layers of the earth and wouldn't you guess, my partner Annie and I made a cake. With all of the layers and even used the sprinkles of dinosaurs to signify the fossils. Thanks a lot Pillsbury Dough Boy!
At Christmas time my mom would bake cookies and arrange them in tins with tissue paper and Hershey kisses. She would deliver them to neighbors and coworkers. As I got older it was a tradition I was excited to start myself.
After I got married, my high school girlfriends and I got together for "Girls Christmas". It started out with pre-made gingerbread cookies and ready-made icing. This was also the year we started the hashtag #fourfrostingsfivefriends. The hashtag explains itself; I think. The following year we doubled down, we made homemade gingerbread dough and real royal icing. My friend Meghan and I seemed to take a real liking to the tradition and took a class with a local Sugar Cookie Artist, Aime Pope. We invested in cookie cutters, food coloring gels, scribe tools, and mixing bowls.
As my family grew, I was drawn to cupcakes. I loved piping the frosting. Again I invested in all the different tips and pastry bags. Wearing my collection like a badge of honor. I remember when my first daughter was born, I bought a book off of Amazon, "Start A Cupcake Business Today". The idea of reading a book and having a newborn was incredibly overwhelming so I ditched the idea altogether.
By trade, I am an educator. While I continued to grow my family, I completed my undergrad while working at full-time job at the YMCA. From there, I completed grad school earning a master's degree in Early Education. With three babes in tow, it was hard to envision my life as anything BUT a teacher. I baked in my spare time, especially as the weather grew cooler and the days became shorter.
Several years into my career the pandemic hit. I was totally burnt out from all of the never-ending expectations placed upon a teacher's shoulders. My family was suffering. I was suffering. I questioned my decision to enter into the profession for the last two years I taught. I loved teaching but did teaching love me? Enter "French Macarons". At the height of the pandemic, I began baking EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Nobody needs to eat baked goods every single day.. unless of course you are my husband who has a separate belly for desserts.
French Macarons (NOT macaroons!!) are notoriously finicky and as a recovering perfectionist it was my mission to master them. I baked a batch every day. My husband sat at the kitchen island with me scouring the internet for notes on macaronaging, piping, oven temperature, etc. He lovingly purchased me a teal blue sifter, which now sits on my shelf to remind me of his unwavering support in chasing my dreams. As I mentioned before, we quite literally could not eat 45 macarons a week, never mind 5 batch of macarons in a week.
It was then I discovered my secret talent. I could bake. If you struggle with perfectionism, then you are also well acquainted with self-doubt and crippling decision paralysis. After several people had ordered my macarons, I decided to throw caution to the wind. I had a knack for color theory, artistic design, photography, and recipe development I just needed to believe for a second that I was good at it. It was then, I resigned from my teaching position. I decided to take a chance on a dream and Little Crumby Bakeshop was born.
Little Crumby Bakeshop is a permitted, insured Residential Kitchen based out of Haverhill, Ma serving tasty treats and French Macarons to the Merrimack Valley. You will not find a dedicated address for this bakery as there is no storefront. Be sure to check out upcoming events to stay connected!
Financial success allowed Duncan to build an elegant house in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Its interior represents the Neoclassical style of architecture that prevailed during the early 1800s and provides an appropriate backdrop for the American Wing's strong collection of New England furniture of this era.
The parlor from the Duncan House is an excellent example of New England's interpretation of the Scottish architect Robert Adam's Neoclassical style. Delicate composition ornament and mahogany pilasters are important signifiers of this architectural mode. There are also echoes of ancient Greece and Rome in such decorative motifs as Etruscan scrolls and urns draped with fabric and festoons of flowers.
Haverhill, Massachusetts, emerged in the late eighteenth century as an industrial center for the milling of lumber and wheat as well as for distilling, shipbuilding, textile manufacturing, and leather processing. Located on the Merrimack River, with direct access to the Atlantic Ocean, Haverhill also became an important port for foreign and domestic trade.
Image: Detail of a map of Haverhill, ca. 1860. The three-story building attached to the back of the Eagle House hotel is likely the Duncan House. Image courtesy of Haverhill Public Library, Haverhill, Massachusetts.
Unfortunately, no photographs exist of the Duncan House prior to its alteration and eventual demolition. However, we can be sure that it consisted of three five-bay, single-pile stories, with two rooms divided by a central hall on each floor. An ell built off the back of the house contained a back parlor, dining room, and kitchen. It most likely resembled the William Haven House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
The Duncans' formal parlor had windows on the fireplace wall and on the two adjacent walls. The room opposite the parlor had the same layout and probably served as a less formal sitting room with simpler architectural woodwork. The four upstairs rooms would have been bedrooms for the Duncans, their two sons, and the family's servants.
American builders frequently consulted design books for inspiration in crafting interior woodwork. Neoclassical taste was widely disseminated through publications such as William Pain's Practical Builder, from which the designs for the Duncans' overmantel and the blind-fretwork frieze in the cornice were taken. The fourth edition of Pain's treatise was printed in Boston in 1792 and would have been readily available to the builders of the Duncan House.
An extensive collection of the Duncans' bills has remained intact, providing us with detailed information about the original furnishings of this room. Because the parlor was where the family entertained guests, the Duncans chose to cover the floor with an expensive Brussels carpet and the walls with a decorative paper and border. Secondary rooms would have featured less costly carpeting or mats and painted or plastered walls.
James Duncan Jr. partnered with his father in the family's shipping and mercantile business. The two men owned numerous vessels that plied trade routes in the eastern United States, Europe, and the Caribbean. They also established a chain of retail stores in Massachusetts and New Hampshire selling the clothing, hardware, pottery, and pewter they imported from Europe.
This detail of an 1824 painting by Henry Sargent (1770-1845) entitled The Tea Party depicts an elegant Boston interior informally arranged to facilitate the circulation of guests and spontaneous conversations. Image courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.
The Duncan House was in the bustling heart of downtown Haverhill, Massachusetts, just a short walk from the wharves that provided the family's livelihood. As members of Haverhill's social elite, the Duncans entertained often and elaborately. They used the parlor and dining room to receive their guests. Like other well-to-do families of the early nineteenth century, they restricted their daily meals and activities to less formal areas of the home.
According to family history, James Duncan Jr. experienced a reversal of fortune on account of British blockades during the War of 1812. Despite his financial losses, the Duncan family continued to occupy the house for two more decades. When Duncan's widow, Rebekah, moved out of the house in 1832, she leased it to William H. Brown, who converted it into a tavern and inn known as the Eagle House. Brown expanded the building in 1842 and purchased it outright, along with the land on which it stood, from James and Rebekah's son James H. Duncan in 1845. Less than ten years later, he built a seventy-five-room addition directly in front of the earlier structure, completely obscuring the house from view. The two first-floor parlors of the Duncan House served as the hotel's office and reception room.
After the demolition of the Eagle House inn in 1911, Mrs. F. W. Wallace, an antiquarian from Haverhill, arranged for the architectural elements from the formal parlor and one of the bedrooms to be sold to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Both rooms were installed in 1924, although the bedroom was later deaccessioned to make space for new acquisitions.
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