Written By Sherwood Kohn
Jane Sussman used to be in the egg business. Now she breaks them–lots of them. Maybe 14 dozen a week.
Not that they go to waste. They all get mixed into the more than 80 cakes she bakes every week.
Mrs. Sussman has been turning out about a dozen cakes a day for 33 years in her two kitchens on Nicodemus Road and selling them at the Ag Center Farmers’ Market.
Yes, two kitchens. Four ovens. And all by herself. At 80, she has been baking ever since she married Marvin “Bob” Sussman 58 years ago. Born in Baltimore’s Druid Hill neighborhood, she learned to cook from her mother, “a wonderful cook,” she said.
Mr. Sussman ran an egg sales route in Baltimore for many years.
Fifty years ago, he and Mrs. Sussman bought the Carroll County farm and raised chickens–some 5,000 of them at any one time– for 35 years.
But when an avian flu epidemic hit, they gave up the birds and concentrated on eggs and cakes. Mr. Sussman retired last year at 84, although he still has some wholesale customers. Mrs. Sussman continues to bake some 35 varieties, ranging from Jewish apple to coconut pound cake, and sells them, with her friend of 30 years, Anita Bullock (“she does pies”), on Saturdays at a booth in the Farmers’ Market.
“The Jewish apple is the most popular,” said Mrs. Sussman.
The Sussmans have three children and three grandchildren, all living in Carroll County. –S.D.K.
