In offices around the city, people are buying bags of these old fashioned “Tea Cakes” by the dozens.
The recipe for the cookies is Kita’s secret but those who have tasted them return to order bags by the dozens.
The cookie is being marketed through “Black Sugar,” LLC and is in high demand. “I might have to give up my day job,” said Kita responding to the surprising demand for his cookies that are being described as “crack in a cookie.”
“It’s just an old fashion tea cake,” he said, “nothing more, nothing less.”
For the last year, Wright has been cooking batches of his special recipe and giving them away to friends to fine-tune his recipe.
A month ago, the cookies were no longer free, but are now in little bags with his “Black Sugar” logo. He’s selling them by the thousands.
“It seems like the ultimate party favorite,” said Wright, noting that Senator Katrina Jackson ordered two thousand “Black Sugar” cookies for her senior birthday party this week at the Civic Center and dozens of other groups and businesses are getting in on the “Black Sugar” craze.
As a student at Carroll High School in the 1990’s, Kita Wright was one of only a few males in the school’s home economics class of Mrs. Billie Creed and Mrs. Janice Flemmings. He learned to sew, manage a household, and cook.
He made the first prototypes of the “Black Sugar” cookie while a student at Carroll and gave them as gifts to his teachers and friends. Over the years, he baked the cookies in his kitchen as a hobby and surprised friends with batches of his special cookie that some say is like crack on a cookie.
Wright, a graduate of the Dallas Institue of Art, is a nationally recognized photographer and owner of Proworks Productions, LLC, a video and photography business he started when he was 13 years old.
Nearly 30 years later, he’s using everything he learned in high school, and it’s putting big dollars in his pocket.
He’s protective of his recipe and only involves close family in his enterprise, guided by his cousin by marriage, Lavondalyn Smith, who manages his operations. Though he is constantly bombarded by people interested in investing in the “Black Sugar” phenomenon, Wright has turned down all offers.
Carroll High also taught him to sew, Wright says, but he has no immediate plans for his sewing talents. “Black Sugar is keeping me busy enough.”
The Black Sugar, LLC ships cans of the down-home “Teacakes” across the country in tins thanks to exposure in social media and the company’s website: “theblacksugarbakery.com”
