The Wu sisters expand Happy Eatery operations to Manassas

There’s a new bakery and cafe in town and the cakes there are pretty darn good.

Victoria Wu and her sister, Emily Wu-Rorrer, recently opened Cakes by Happy Eatery, a bakery and cafe at 9685 Liberia Ave.

The new bakery in Manassas is the second in the area for the Wu family, which opened its first business in 1986 when the late Tzy Woei Wu and his wife, Fu-Mei Wu, opened a Chinese restaurant in Alexandria.
Their daughter, Victoria Wu, said the restaurant lacked good desserts.

“If you go into a Chinese restaurant, the only dessert you get is fortune cookies and oranges. So to make it a little bit different, they brought in a baker and a pastry chef to bake their in-house desserts,”she said of her parents.

The desserts caught on.

When the shopping center they were in got torn down to make way for new development, the Wus moved to Centreville and opened the first Cakes by Happy Eatery at Centreville Square. That store soon began to draw customers from as far away as Ashburn, Leesburg and Manassas.

The new Manassas bakery, which opened in October, has already drawn customers from as far as Quantico and Stafford, the 41-year-old Wu said.

While the Wus and their staff of bakers make muffins, fruit turnovers, cupcakes and more, the cakes that are made from scratch on premises are the real draw.
“People aren’t going to drive for a great eclair, but they are going to drive for a great cake,” she said.

Not so long ago, big box grocery stores with lower-priced baked goods were running local bakeries out of business.

Wu said times have changed again in favor of the independent bakeries.

The Wu’s standard cake is a European genoise sponge cake that is not too sweet, but Wu said her bakers often stray from their norm to please what she calls her “southern clients.”
“If you like it maybe a medium sweet or you like it super sweet, we have different fillings we can use,” she said.

The showcases in the bakery brim with goodies that include strawberry mousse, raspberry amaretto, Bavarian with fresh fruit, and mocha truffle tortes.

For chocolate lovers, the bakery’s cakes come in chocolate ganache, Chocolate Doberge, Red Velvet and Peanut Butter or Turtle Decadence.

In addition to their showcase cakes, the sisters can produce custom cakes that can include everything from a reproduction of a poker table complete with confectionery playing cards, poker chips and a spilled bottle of Jack Daniel’s whisky, to electric guitars for rock-themed parties , to cherry blossom cakes, to traditional wedding cakes.

“Everybody here is a baker. Everybody is a decorator,” Wu said. 

While Victoria Wu manages the business end of the two stores, Emily Wu-Rorrer oversees the operations.
Wu-Rorrer has been baking since she was a kid.

“I always had an interest in it, so starting young, I played around in the kitchen a lot,” the 32-year-old Wu-Rorrer said.

Her father put her to work in the restaurant kitchen when she was 12, said Wu-Rorrer.

“To get out of trouble, or to stay out of trouble, my father introduced me to my new weekend job,” Wu-Rorrer said.

Wu tells the story of he younger sister winning over a temperamental baker.
“The baker really needed someone, but every time my father sent someone to help, the baker would run them away,” Wu said

On her first day at work, the young Emily Wu locked with the baker in a staring contest, but he was unsuccessful at running her off. The two eventually warmed to each other, Wu said.

“Within a couple of weeks, they were best friends,” Wu said.

Manassas Bureau Chief Keith Walker can be reached at 703-369-6751.