We can all thank the cupcake craze for the creation of Bars Bakery. "Cupcakes were really big, and I thought, 'I can't do that, everyone else is doing it,'" said co-owner Sandi Younkin. "And then 'bars' just popped into my head." Thank goodness. Eighteen months later, Younkin and Kara Younkin Viswanathan, her daughter and business partner, continue to find new ways to not just utilize but glorify the 9-by-13-inch pan (view the recipe online). "It turns out that bars are such a Midwestern thing," said Younkin. "We had a customer in from the East Coast, and she had never heard of them. And here I thought they were a part of every church dinner in the country."
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It’s too soon to tell how much the immigration crackdown is to blame.
