HOUSTON — From home-run-inducing laundry cart rides to waves at the dugout after base hits, there is no shortage of signature traditions to this Red Sox season.
So for this group to celebrate milestones with Champagne and beer? How routine. From birthdays to 10-year service time anniversaries to playoff clinchers, no festivities are complete for the 2021 Red Sox without one of the custom-made creations from Bekah’s Pink Apron Cakes, the tiny cake company crafting treats that would fit right in on the Food Network for nearly all of this club’s on-field and off-accomplishments.
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Bekah’s Pink Apron Cakes is not your average bakery. The operation is the brainchild of Bekah Eovaldi, Nathan Eovaldi’s wife, who has turned her hobby into a small business mostly serving family, friends and acquaintances out of her Houston and Boston area homes, with the Red Sox now her No. 1 customer.
“The cookies she makes and the stuff she does, honestly it’s a super-amazing talent,” said reliever Adam Ottavino, who received a custom-built cake to celebrate his 10th season of major-league service time. “I don’t have any idea how she does any of that. Sculpture with food. It’s crazy.”
“Stuff that almost looks too good and too pretty to eat,” reliever Garrett Richards added.
For Game 3 of the American League Division Series, Bekah delivered cookies with edible photos from the team’s wild-card winning game over the Yankees the previous week.
Ahead of Game 4, a red and blue cake with an edible photo of Fenway Park was the dessert of the day.
“By the time I saw it, it was a cake that had been cut away, three-quarters of it already gone,” lamented pitching coach Dave Bush.
“Each time you try one, it’s like, ‘That’s the best cake I’ve ever had,’” said Bobby Dalbec, who requested an ice cream cookies and cream cake for his birthday in late June.
When Eovaldi celebrated his 10-year status in the league, Bekah was back home in Texas, but delivered a custom sugar cookie with photos of him from each team he’d played for along with his uniform number at each stop.
He didn’t share that one with any of his teammates, though.
“I crushed it all by myself,” he said.
Many with the team, from players to coaches to media relations staff, marveled at the cake she brought to Fenway for Ottavino’s decade in the league. The cake featured logos of the four teams he’s played for — the Cardinals, Rockies, Yankees and Red Sox — along with a glove and baseball that looked like they were taken out of his locker.
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“It looked like real leather, it’s crazy,” Dalbec said. “I don’t know how she does it, it’s impressive.”
“It was super nice,” Ottavino said. “It looked like my glove on the cake, and it had all the teams I had been on and (read), ’10 years.’ It looked better than anything you’d find in any bakery. My wife was blown away by it.”
The baking business is something Bekah has been perfecting for the better part of the last decade as her husband has traipsed across big league ballparks.
Eovaldi met his wife while the two were teenagers at Alvin High School, just outside of Houston. In 2006, shortly after they’d started dating, his high school baseball team hosted a fundraiser. Bekah baked some cupcakes that were a big hit and realized she enjoyed the process. Eovaldi was drafted by the Dodgers in 2008, and the following year while he was emerging as a prospect in the minors, she was honing her craft, too. From her home bakery she’s turned out cakes for weddings, anniversaries and baby showers, taking orders and requests through her Instagram page Bekah’s Pink Apron Cakes.
Bekah and Nathan Eovaldi with their children at the 2021 All-Star Game. (Mary DeCicco / MLB Photos via Getty Images)“In 2009, she started baking a ton and I was crushing them and started gaining weight, and the guys were giving me a hard time about it when I got back to spring training,” Eovaldi laughed.
He realized he needed to ease off on the consumption, but thought his teammates might be able to help. From time to time, Eovaldi has delivered her desserts to his teams over the years, but it’s only this year that they’ve really become a staple for one of his clubs, with players waiting to see what she comes up with next at big moments.
Not everyone has been able to enjoy the fruits of her labor, though.
“I am extremely jealous because they look amazing, the cookies look amazing, the cupcakes look amazing, the cakes looking amazing,” Kiké Hernández said. “But I’m dairy-free, so every time she brings something in I try not to even walk by it because it’s just torture.”
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As the Red Sox embark on the championship series against the Astros on Friday, there are rumblings of some special cookies being made.
“Usually what happens is we’ll come in and there will be whatever she’s made, cake or cookies, something up in the food room and everyone knows right away it was from her — because it always looks perfect and tastes delicious,” Bush said.
(Top photo of Ottavino’s cake courtesy of Boston Red Sox)
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