Trying to add a payment method? You can do this on the 
QuickTake:
Thanks to a plug on CBS, the mother of the Oregon offensive coordinator got a boost for her Louisville bakery. Meanwhile the Ducks’ 10th-ranked offense continues to be a treat for fans.
Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein is sitting next to me in Oregon’s press room on a Wednesday afternoon. We’re on a Zoom with his Aunt Blakey and waiting for his mom, Debbie, to connect.
This is supposed to be an interview about cake, but the conversation has somehow turned toward chili, after Blakey mentions she’s hosting the high school football team for dinner later in Louisville.
“Blakey is the best cook,” Stein says. “The greatest chili maker of all.”
And though Stein warns that noodles are a staple of Louisville chili, I’m inclined to believe him — I’ve already sampled some of Blakey and Debbie’s culinary work, and I’d be happy to do it again.
And after that plug by Brad Nessler on CBS, I know I’m not the only one.
See, Blakey and Debbie are the owners of SissyCakes bakery, which started as a hobby in 2003, took off during the pandemic and now operates out of a facility in St. Matthews, just east of Louisville.
They sell a lineup of bundt-style cakes — pumpkin, cinnamon pecan coffee, caramel apple, and chocolate chip — but the one that turned SissyCakes into a full-fledged brick-and-mortar bakery is the orange juice cake: Debbie’s creation.
Debbie, Stein says, was “the birthday cake mom” when he was growing up.
“It was always white-on-white,” he says. “And whether it was a cake or cupcakes, everyone at my school knew the cupcakes were amazing.”
The orange juice cake was treated like gold among Will and his friends — a delicacy often imitated but never replicated.
“I remember one kid brought in a cake to school and said, ‘My mom made an orange juice cake,’” Stein says. “And I’m like, ‘No, they didn’t. There’s only one orange juice cake — my mom’s.’ The only people who know the recipe are these two and my wife. It’s tight-lipped. So when this kid said he had the recipe, I tried it and was like, ‘This is terrible. This is not the cake.’”
How does Stein describe the cake?
“Moist,” he says — the first time in my 12 years covering the Ducks that a coach has ever described something to me that way.
But I can’t argue. In preparation for this interview, I ordered a large orange juice cake. It shipped from Kentucky, arrived in Oregon two days later, and — as I tell Debbie when her Zoom feed finally pops up — made me a pretty popular person around the Lookout Eugene-Springfield office.
The cake appears to be a simple bundt, but it’s unbelievably — as Stein said — moist, with an orange finish that isn’t too overpowering. It’s not a complicated cake. It lets its ingredients shine — like the way Stein runs a college offense.
“Feed the studs,” is how Stein often describes it. “Put your best players in position to make plays.”
It’s worked pretty well for him. The former Louisville quarterback has now coordinated a pair of top-10 offenses in his first two full seasons with the Ducks. In Year 3, Stein’s offense sits at 10th nationally — but this time with a different set of ingredients.
After having Bo Nix his first year and Dillon Gabriel his second, Stein is breaking in Dante Moore, a talented quarterback who’s far less experienced than Oregon’s last two at the position. Moore’s been excellent at times and struggled in others. But with the nation’s No. 8 rushing attack, Stein’s Ducks are more than happy to let the running backs shine.
They did against Oklahoma State — the game that changed everything for SissyCakes Bakery back in September.
Stein and his wife, Darby, are neighbors with Brian Movalson, who serves as the spotter inside the Autzen Stadium broadcast booth. On the Thursday night before Oregon faced Oklahoma State, Movalson hosted the traveling CBS broadcast crew for dinner at his house. He invited the Steins, who grabbed an orange juice cake on their way out the door.
Debbie had given Darby the recipe around the time she and Stein got engaged. Stein admits it wasn’t an immediate success — Darby, he says, can be a little casual when it comes to following exact baking instructions — but she eventually dialed it in. So when broadcaster Brad Nessler cut himself a slice that night, he didn’t just rave about it to Will and Darby. He used some fourth-quarter airtime — with Oregon leading 69-3 — to tell the nation on CBS.
“Now, I don’t usually eat dessert,” Nessler said on the broadcast. “But I saw these brownies and this bundt cake on the table, and I said, ‘Somebody has to try this. I’m going to try this.’ And it was Will Stein’s wife, Darby, who made it — but it’s his mom Debbie’s recipe. It is the best thing I’ve ever tasted, dessert-wise, in my life. I’m not even kidding.”
Debbie was in the stands when that happened. Within seconds, her phone started buzzing and wouldn’t stop.
“It was blowing up,” Debbie says. “Just blowing up with orders.”
They’d already been shipping cakes before the plug, but back in Kentucky, when Blakey looked around the bakery and saw about 40 boxes — their usual month’s supply — she knew this was something different.
“We had 150 — almost 200 — orders,” Blakey says. “And we were like, ‘Oh my gosh.’”
After more than 30 years of baking together, Debbie and Blakey were busier than they’d ever been. But they weren’t surprised by the reactions from people who’ve tried the cake.
There’s always a reaction — the same kind you get to most of the cooking in a family that shows its love through food. Stein remembers holidays like Thanksgiving, when he and his 18 cousins would pile into one house for food and football.
And while Debbie admits she sometimes struggles with the distance — it’s 2,300 miles from Eugene to Louisville — the mom who used to slip slices of cake into her boy’s lunch can take solace in knowing her now-36-year-old son is still well-fed.
Darby’s got it handled.
“She’s actually gotten really good at it now — I mean, it’s her cake that got Brad Nessler and Gary Danielson,” Stein says. “So she’s proven to be worthy.”
