For Galveston pastry chef April Didrikson, owning a bakery for almost 10 years gave her a recipe for how to create and launch a new product. "I'm so used to working seven days a week," Didrikson said.

I think I made the first version of this carrot cake back when I was pastry sous chef at Gilt, the now long-ago shuttered restaurant inside New York’s Palace Hotel. My pastry boss at the time, David ...