All three brothers dedicated their lives to making sweet memories and treats for the people of Houston. As a fifth generation baker, Bobby has done the same with Sigmund’s help.  He used to go tot the Bakery when he was 4 or 5 and tell him “play with these toys” and eating in the café. When he was about 8 years old, Bobby was “at the table” in the production area with his dad and uncles. They would slap the dough at him and kid around with him – all the while he was learning the art of bread making at his father’s side. When he was a little older he began learning the sweets side of the business.

The original three brothers of Three Brothers Bakery

People always ask us what are your favorites at the Bakery? Sigmund’s not able to eat the sweetest baked goods, but his favorite bread from the bakery is Malsovit. It’s high fiber, grain bread that is great for you. There is even a diet formulated around it – the Malsovit Diet. It’s not out on our racks, but we usually have it. You just have to ask for it. We keep it frozen and most folks buy 6-8 loaves at a time. The family has been making this multigrain bread for years. When I seriously diet, it is the only bread I eat. Stay tuned on the Blog, and I’ll write one about Malsovit at a later date.

Now, Bobby on the other hand, loves his sweets and his favorite treats are our fantastic eclairs and brownies. Bobby has to eat chocolate every day! After one of the hurricanes, we found a tray of eclairs and if I remember correctly I ate one of them, and “someone” was not happy with me.

Why not get dad his favorite treat for Father’s Day? Maybe try one of our cakes, cupcakes, cookies or Bobby’s favorites – eclairs or brownies. We’ve been in the business a long time and what better way to celebrate than with recipes handed down from father to son!

Have a great Father’s Day and tell us what you got dad on our Facebook or Twitter!

]]> http://blog.3brothersbakery.com/2013/06/happy-fathers-day/feed/ 0 http://blog.3brothersbakery.com/2013/06/a-winning-week/ http://blog.3brothersbakery.com/2013/06/a-winning-week/#comments Thu, 06 Jun 2013 18:01:38 +0000 Janice Jucker http://blog.3brothersbakery.com/?p=1667 Continue reading →]]> We don’t normally like to brag, but last week was a big week for us. After a week full of awards and honors, we just wanted to share them with you all, our loyal customers, because it is you who make these moments so much sweeter!

We’re thrilled to have received the Jeffery Butland Family-Owned Business of the Year Award at the Small Business Administration/SCORE Awards last Thursday. The awards from the Small Business Administration recognize small businesses making an impact on their community. This award in particular honors a family-owned and operated business, which has been passed on from one generation to the next.

SBA Jeffery Butland Family Owned Business of the Year Award Presented to the Jucker Family and Three Brothers Bakery.

And as if getting the award was not enough, it was presented by non other than Houston’s Mayor Annise Parker. It was an incredible day and will probably be one of the most important days in the history of Three Brothers Bakery

Bobby Jucker, Renee Jucker Helfman, Janice Jucker, Mayor Annise Parker, Yolanda Garcia Olivarez– SBA Regional Director & Manuel Gonzalez- SBA District Director (Photo credit: Sandra Louvier)

Bobby & I with Mayor Annise Parker and Goldman Sachs, 10,000 Small Business Alumni Director, Ximena Murillo (who nominated us)

Congratulations to all the award winners!

To top off an already amazing week, Friday we participated in the Cancer Survivor Celebration at Memorial Hermann’s Memorial City Medical Center for the second year in a row. We were competing against other Houston bakeries for overall presentation and taste in the event’s “Tiered-Cake Challenge.” After winning 1^st Place in last year’s “Cupcake Wars” challenge, we were given first choice of which cancer survivors we wanted to honor with our cake.

This year we knew we needed to step up our game. We honored breast cancer survivors with a beautiful cake, entitle “Embracing the Dance.” I was touched because our team chose breast cancer because of my journey with it.

Why “Embracing the Dance?” I always say to those who find out they have cancer to “embrace it.” You have cancer- that fact won’t change, so attack it with a positive attitude. Tell people about it, let them help you and ask for their help. Let people love you. And you’ll be shocked at how many people do love you, care and want to help. It is the dance of a lifetime- embrace it and others will embrace you.

Embracing the Dance- 1st Place Tiered Cake American Cancer Society/Memorial Hermann Survivor’s Celebration (Checkout our Photo Album on Facebook for more pics- the back of the cake definitely deserves a peak from you.)

A Strawberry Lemonade Cupcake Presented to the Judges

Okay, enough heavy talk- let’s get back to my bragging.

This year we are happy to report that we are still the reigning champions! Our Strawberry Lemonade cake (look for it at the bakery soon) won the judges over and once again we won 1^st Place Tiered Cake in the American Cancer Society/Memorial Hermann Tiered Cake Challenge.

Bobby, Jael (representing our decorators) and me accepting our 1st Place prize

Remember if you want to see more from our fantastic week, head over to our Facebook page!

How was your week? Did you do anything sweet? Tell us about it on Twitter!

PS – Check out Bobby in his Decorating Challenge on the Cake Show – the Search for America’s Best Decorator.

We really want to take this opportunity to say we appreciate all those who have fallen in service to our country. Thank you for your honor, your courage and all that you have done to ensure our freedom.

What are your Memorial Day plans? Share them with us on Facebook or Twitter!

Of course, we would love to help you make memories with gender reveal cake, cupcakes or even cake balls, but we found some other ideas that are too cute to not share!

1)     Balloons in, or rather out, of a box let the big secret out for all to see! This one makes for a wonderful picture so be sure you have a camera or photographer with you. Take your sonogram in a sealed envelope (no peaking!) to a family member or friend who can be trusted with the secret. Let them fill a box with either pink or blue balloons, and get the camera ready!

2)     Get a little silly with Silly String! Again take your sealed sonogram to a trusted person who will then buy pink or blue Silly String. After covering the cans in plain white paper, the big reveal will be cute and fun! This one would be great with a large group and of course, lots of cake and trusty photographer to capture the memories being made.

3)     Confetti of course! This one is another balloon-centered reveal, but with a fun pop at the end. Based on the sonogram, have that family member or friend buy gender neutral balloons and fill it with pink or blue confetti while filling the helium. Then POP! You’ll have a cute shower of pink or blue!

All of these are fun ideas that would accompany cake perfectly at a party! For all of these ideas and more, visit our Pinterest board.

Do you have any fun ideas for gender reveal parties or have we helped you create your own gender reveal moments? Share them with us on our Facebook.

We have had the pleasure of making graduation cakes for college grads from University of Houston to Texas A&M and more! We know how important the big day is to you and to your family and when creating your graduation treats, we take the time to ensure that every detail is just how you want it!

If you’d like to order a cake to celebrate this milestone in your life or that of your family member’s give us a call to set up an appointment at our main store 713.666.2253 (CAKE) or our Memorial store 713.464.2253 (CAKE) or send us an email at orders@3brothersbakery.com.

How did you celebrate graduation? Share with us on our Facebook or Twitter! Also share your graduation cake pictures with us on Instagram!

Most who know me know I was diagnosed with breast cancer in September, 2006.  The minute I received the phone call I told my nurse practitioner I was going to remove them both.  So many encouraged me to have just a lumpectomy, but I would not be deterred.  I was number seven in my family to have breast cancer – my mother and her two sister and three cousins.  Some even wonder if my great grandmother, who died in Russia during the pogroms, might have had ovarian cancer.  They said her stomach was hard as a rock.

I was tested for the BRCA1 & 2 gene, as was my mother, and we were both negative.  But my wonderful doctor, Dr. Anthony Lucci – Surgical Oncologist at MD Anderson, told me based on my family history there must be another gene out there – we just don’t know yet what it might be.

So back to my decision – I had a bilateral mastectomy with TRAM flap reconstruction.   When the pathology came back, my breast with cancer had 14 spots of cancer.  Translation – I made the right decision.  Dr. Lucci said I would have been impossible to follow.  Why did I choose the prophylactic (optional) mastectomy of the other breast?  I knew it was not if but when would I get the cancer in the other breast, as happened to my mother.

My surgery was 11 hours and my wonderful husband and sister were there for over 15 hours.  We arrived at 5am and Bobby saw me in recovery at 9pm.

I did not want them to be alone, so I had a surgery party, and I heard it was great!  I planned for people to come all day to the waiting room.  I packed a rolling cooler and of course, we had goodies from the bakery.  My friend Alyne made a wonderful sign-in book, so I could see later who all came and the nice notes they wrote to us.  I think about 40 people came to my party.  J  But I must admit I was glad to be the one in the operating room because waiting for 14-15 hours in a hospital waiting room does not sound fun – even with a great party.

I remember waking up in recovery and seeing my husband putting lip balm on my lips and next seeing my sister and mother-in-law. Bobby stayed with me that night.  The next day my sister was sitting by my bed when I woke up. Later my mother-in-law returned and with my sister looked at the fine work of Dr. Jeff Friedman, my amazing, artistic plastic surgeon from Methodist, and told me I looked like a Playboy bunny.

The Playboy bunny “thing” was short lived because, not sure if you know, our family has a bakery and now my stomach fat is my breast tissue, so it’s the first place I gain weight plus other places.  Surgery recovery was about 8 weeks and then chemo for six months.  Still, today, I am happy with my decision to have a bilateral mastectomy.

Breast cancer changed my life – for the better.  I am a different person both outside (thanks to my great docs) and inside (thanks to family and friends).  Life is precious, and I want to leave a tiny good mark on this world.  I’ve made so many new friends and expanded my horizons.  I even joined the board of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Houston Affiliate, recently.

Today I signed up for the 2013 Race for the Cure taking place October 5th. With your help I would like to see our team raise $10,000.   So join me, join my team and of course donate, and let’s raise money and awareness to stamp out this disease.

And thank you Angelina Jolie for giving us the strength and voice to say out loud it’s okay to not save the TaTas and, if we have to, save ourselves instead. 

This has been a long journey and we have seen many sights and experienced quite a lot with you, our wonderful customers, so we wanted to share our adventure with you. We even have some tour guides on our little Road Trip:

Our first location was a wonderful spot on Holman and La Branch. We had the pleasure of operating there from May 1949 until May 1955. Now this location is home to Midtown Art Center. We loved our corner location on the first floor, but it didn’t have the parking we required then, which looks like might still be an issue now!

Next we moved to Almeda and Southmore, where we stayed from 1955 to 1960. Now that location is a wigs and hair accessories store. While we were there, we had the opportunity to help out another small business. A little girl and her mother had set up a cute little lemonade stand with some of the best pralines we have ever had! Maybe we should’ve stayed at that location; it seems to be a sweet spot!

We finally made it over to our next location, which most of you know and love! Our South Braeswood location has been our home since 1960. With its three red spires and original black and white checkerboard floor, this location was built by the Three Brothers and serves as inspiration in our logo.

While our South Braeswood location became our long-term home, we later decided we wanted to branch out and open another shop. We chose the Sugar Creek area out in Sugarland and loved it so much that we left one store and moved across the street! We were there from 1984 until 2006. Unfortunately after 22 years, we had to close shop in Sugarland due to prolonged road construction that was hurting business.

Soon, we moved into a location in River Oaks, in the oldest shopping strip center in America. We were there for 18 years, until the landlord decided to tear down the complex. The last day at that location, we opened all the cases and invited everyone to enjoy our treats from this storefront. We had “No Wrecking Ball” cookies! It was a great location that we still miss to this day.  Now there is a new center with a Jamba Juice in the old store.

In 2012, we opened our Memorial location, which was our first expansion after Hurricane Ike, and have been so happy with it since! We celebrated our one year anniversary not too long ago and cannot wait to spend so many more years with you!

Next, we opened up our online store! While we love seeing your beautiful faces light up when we can get you a sweet treat, our online store has helped us find those Three Brothers fans that may not be near us. We opened online in 2006 and have been going strong ever since!

Finally, we are happy to announce we are currently looking for our next location! Do you have a place in mind?  Please send any ideas for available specific locations to customerservice@3brothersbakery.com – In the subject line write: Attention Janice

Thanks for joining us on our little Road Trip through the Three Brothers history! In honor of our 64^th anniversary, we are having a 64₵ birthday cupcake special! Check our Facebook for the promo code!

Thank you for helping us continue on our journey of creating sweet memories together! We hope you enjoyed our tour!

The Jewish holiday, Tu Bishvat, the New Year for Trees (similar to Earth Day), takes place in January but Arbor Day seems like the perfect opportunity to start taking care of trees here in Houston. Houston is lucky enough to have an organization dedicated  entirely to planting, protecting and promoting trees. Trees for Houston has planted over 430,000 trees in the past 30 years. This Arbor Day, why not make donating to the tree fund part of your family’s Arbor and/or Earth Day tradition?

We found a couple of great ideas for making your own tree fund piggy bank:

The template for this quick and easy-to-create bank can be found here.

You can decorate an old coffee can for a cute donation bank, as well!

It doesn’t matter what you and your children put the money into, the important thing is that it goes to a good cause! If you made a tree fund bank share it with us on Twitter or Facebook! We may have a sweet reward for the best ones!

If you would like to donate to Trees for Houston, click here and thank you!

While our family has been baking cakes for almost two centuries, the tradition of the birthday cake has been around since Ancient Rome. During the Roman Era the cakes were usually simple flat, round cakes of flour baked with nuts, leavened with yeast and topped with honey. The first cakes were more like bread versus the cakes we know. Those came in the 15^th century from Germany.

The tradition of putting candles on top came from the early Greeks. They would put candles on top of the round cakes making them “glow like the moon” and offered them to the goddess of the moon, Artemis. The Greeks would say a prayer then blow out the candles and say a prayer so the smoke would carry these prayers to the heavens.

While the traditions have evolved and the cakes have gotten more extravagant, the idea of celebrating life has continued. We are happy carrying on these traditions by creating beautiful, custom birthday cakes for you and your loved ones. We’d love to see your favorite birthday memories! Feel free to share them on our Facebook wall or send us a tweet (@3brothersbakery) with your photos.

For more information on the origins of the birthday cake visit these sites:

http://books.google.com/books?id=pE4KAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA380#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Cakes/BirthdayCake.htm

http://www.tokenz.com/history-of-birthday-cake.html

http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/154808/cooking_recipes/birthday_cake_history.html

So you may be wondering how we came up with the yummy idea of the Nestlé Crunch Pie.  Well, we must say, we went through more than 35 different test recipes before we came across “the one”. We came up with a few recipes, which were absolutely delicious, however they didn’t photograph as nicely as we’d hoped.  People say it’s what’s on the inside that counts but in this competition, looking good is half the battle.

Take if from Bobby, who said, “People eat with their eyes…If it doesn’t look good people aren’t going to eat it. No matter how good it tastes.”

We tried Danish, French pastries, apple pie with Crunch, cookies with chocolate chips and caramel, turnovers and even Crunch cookie bars. It took a long time, and with one experiment we were almost there! We tried a pretzel dough boat with a cinnamon and NESTLE CRUNCH® filling; It tasted incredible, but it wasn’t very pretty. So we kept trying different tasty desserts until we finally created something that looks as good as it tastes. And that, friends, is how we ended up with our delicious Nestlé Crunch Pie as one of fifteen desserts competing for the best in the nation in NESTLE CRUNCH®’s 75^th Birthday Showdown!

You’re invited to a sampling and voting event this Friday, April 12 at our Braeswood location from 12-3 pm. We’ll have samples of our Nestlé creation on hand for you to try and computers on site to make the voting process easy as pie! Can’t make it out on Friday? You can still try our Nestlé Crunch Pie at our either of our locations and please continue to vote for us once a day until April 21st!