Johnnie Gabriel of Gabriel’s Desserts
Paula Deen’s Cake Cookin’ Cousin  

By Mike McLeod

Just about everyone knows Paula Deen, the Food Network star and owner of the Lady and Sons restaurant in Savannah. It’s hard to miss her if you watch the Food Network or Oprah or if you browse any food magazines or recipe books. Paula Deen also has a Marietta connection. She is the cousin of Johnnie Gabriel, owner of Gabriel’s Desserts. 

Actually, when people ask Johnnie Gabriel if she is Paula Deen’s cousin, she usually replies, “No—she’s my cousin.” 

Like Paula Deen, Johnnie began baking and cooking out of need. Paula wrote in her autobiography, Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin’, “I wasn’t born with any great desire to cook.” 

Paula worked in real estate, insurance, in a bank, hung wallpaper, worked at Kroger, worked in a hospital as a Medicaid/Medicare biller, and she even sold kitty litter as a grease absorber—and made $60 a week doing it. But because of her agoraphobia, she lived for 20 years “…in anguish, waiting every day to die.” Out of the necessity to take care of her two sons, she started The Bag Lady, her sandwich selling/catering business. 

Johnnie Gabriel’s life took a somewhat different path that eventually led her down the same road Paula followed. Johnnie was born in Columbus, Ga., but at the age of five, her family moved to Macon. Her father had various jobs with the federal government, the railroad and the Air Force. 

It was after moving to Macon that Johnnie’s Grandmother Kate “Big Mama” Howell came to live with them. Johnnie vividly remembers watching her grandmother cook at their kitchen table with the green Formica top and matching seats. 

“I’d just hang on the table and watch her bake,” she reminisced. 

The skills Johnnie learned at her grandmother’s knee would eventually make her famous in Marietta. She also gained some national notoriety after she appeared on one of her cousins TV shows, Paula’s Party, in July of 2007 making her specialty, red velvet cake. 

“Paula Deen put us on the map because of our red velvet cake. I have had people drive from Henry County and Gainesville because Paula Deen has mentioned my red velvet cake on her show. Unbelievable.” 

But like Paula, it took Johnnie a while to get where she is today. After growing up, being widowed, later remarrying and raising kids for 15 years, Johnnie started baking cakes to help pay for her daughter’s apartment rent at the University of Georgia and to help make ends meet during a recession. Then, Johnnie heard that Mary Moon, the local “cake lady” in Marietta who was famous for her lemon cakes, was retiring. She called and asked Mary is she could buy her recipes. 

Mary replied, “You can have them. Nobody in my family wants to work this hard.” 

Johnnie’s business grew as friends bought cakes from her, and when people called Mary Moon for cakes, she referred them to Johnnie. Her cake delivery system was unique, one could say. Customers came to her day job to pick up their cakes, and Johnnie also paid a local dry cleaner a dollar per cake to let her customers pick up cakes there. 

For seven years, both Johnnie and Ed worked regular jobs during the day and baked cakes at night and on Saturdays. Finally, they decided they had to do one or the other. 

After some soul searching, they decided on “the other” and created Gabriel’s Desserts with a bank loan for a 750-square-foot shop on Whitlock Avenue in Marietta. Johnnie and Ed started with two bakers, and as they grew, they added professionally-trained pastry cooks, a pastry chef, cake decorators and bakers. Gabriel’s stayed at that location for ten years, successfully selling cakes and expanding to include breakfast and lunch, before moving in 2007 to their current location a few blocks away at 800 Whitlock Avenue. 

Breakfast and lunch is served daily, but those magnificent cakes are still the star of the show. So how many cakes do they bake and sell each year? 

“I don’t know. We do thousands in December alone. We have one client who buys 275 cakes from us each year in December.” 

Gabriel’s cakes have national and even international appeal, sometimes with Paula’s assistance. In the August issue of Paula Deen’s Holiday Baking magazine, Johnnie and Gabriel’s Desserts were featured in a five-page spread. Cakes from Gabriel’s Desserts have been shipped to customers in Hawaii, Washington, California, Maine and Iraq. 

“It took a few days for the pound cake to get to Iraq, but they still thought it was good,” Johnnie reported. 

Johnnie loves serving the people in the community, and in turn, she feels the community supports her business. She enjoys seeing people two, three or four times a week as they stop in for a meal or for something for their sweet tooth. 

Paula Deen visited Johnnie’s first shop a few years ago. “She pulled up in a big black limo. She was doing a book signing and dropped in.” (Paula Deen has sold between four and five million books.) 

Johnnie has utmost respect and appreciation for Paula’s assistance to her business. “She’s good to us. Her philosophy is: You’re successful as a human when you allow and help others to be successful. That’s what she does. She doesn’t hand it to you, but helps you be successful.  She shares and cares. Paula has enhanced whatever success we’ve had on our own.” 

Growing up, Johnnie spent some time with Paula during the summers. Paula came to Johnnie’s home once or twice, or they met at their grandparents’ place about ten miles from Albany in Riverbend, Ga. The grandparents owned a motel, pool, skating rink and restaurant where people stopped on their way to Florida. 

“It was like Six Flags to us,” Johnnie laughed. 

Johnnie remembers Paula and her Aunt Trina (who was just five years older than Johnnie) teaching her how to swim—by throwing her into the pool there. 

“I could dog paddle at the time, I think.” 

Many years have passed since then, and much water has flowed under the bridge. Paula has become famous, and Johnnie can see why. Even though Paula is two years younger than Johnnie, “Looking back, I can see that Paula was always two steps ahead of me.” 

In some ways, perhaps, but Johnnie’s own road has led her to personal satisfaction and business success. Another feather in her cap is having a new cookbook in print. Cooking in the South With Johnnie Gabriel (Thomas Nelson, publisher) is available at Gabriel’s Desserts, on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, Borders and Kroger. Johnnie is also scheduled to soon appear on QVC to sell her book. 

The next time you are on Whitlock in Marietta, stop in at Gabriel’s and say “hello” to Johnnie over a piece of red velvet cake or fresh strawberry cake, another one of their very popular cakes. 

But remember, Paula Deen is her cousin, not the other way around.

Some of Gabriel’s Dessert specialties include:

Chocolate bourbon pecan cake

Lime Mousse Cake

Flourless chocolate cake (all chocolate)

Pineapple upside down cake

Tira-misu

Yule log (A Christmas Holiday favorite with a thin layer of chocolate cake rolled into the shape of a log filled with chocolate mousse, frosted with chocolate butter cream and decorated with meringue mushrooms, butter cream holly leaves and berries and a dusting of snow (white confectioners sugar).

Contact Gabriel’s Desserts at 770-427-9007 or www.gabrielsdesserts.com.