Meet Carrie DeCicco, owner of Salt Sweets, one of Lake Highlands’ sweetest bakeries.

On an average week, Carrie DeCicco hand rolls 1,000 cookie dough balls every morning, ready to be baked and sprinkled across the Lake Highlands neighborhood.

A Colorado native and Lake Highlands resident of 19 years, DeCicco never expected baking to become a full-time career.

“I started Salt Sweets five years ago, out of the blue,” DeCicco says. “My neighbor had a party and she asked me to make her some chocolate chip cookies and said, ‘Oh, these are so good. You should sell them.’”

What started as a casual suggestion turned into a business opportunity. At the time, DeCicco was teaching 2-year-olds at Prestoncrest Church of Christ Sunshine School in North Dallas. As Salt Sweets grew, she eventually left teaching to focus on the bakery full time.

“If you would have asked me 10 years ago if I would have had my own business like this, I would have laughed,” she says.

Her neighbor, Erin Willis, also inspired the bakery’s name. After noticing the flaky salt DeCicco sprinkled atop her cookies, she suggested the name Salt Sweets.

DeCicco initially baked out of her Lake Highlands home, but growing demand soon required additional kitchen space. Today, she splits her time between her home kitchen and Vector Brewing’s kitchen, which she rents several mornings each week. In return, she supplies the brewery with cookies, cinnamon rolls and cake pops.

As Salt Sweets grew in popularity, DeCicco partnered with other local businesses, including Shady’s Burgers and Brewhaha. Her cookies are now served with kids’ meals at Shady’s locations in Lake Highlands and Richardson.

In addition to those partnerships, most Salt Sweets orders still come through the bakery’s website.

When she’s not baking, DeCicco is a wife, mother of three and travel enthusiast. Her oldest son, Alex, lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. Her daughter, Hillary, recently graduated from Lake Highlands High School, while her son, Brandon, will be a sophomore there this fall.

Family remains at the center of DeCicco’s decisions and is a major reason she has resisted opening a storefront.

“My children do not help me unless absolutely necessary,” DeCicco says with a laugh.

The joke underlines a larger reality: DeCicco values the flexibility of her current business model and the independence of baking her recipes without trusting employees to bake for her.

“Just thinking about opening up a storefront is too much responsibility,” she explains. “I have a hard time trusting people to take my stuff, and I feel like they’re going to mess it up.”

Other bakery owners have warned her about the costs and stress that come with managing a physical location, reinforcing her hesitation.

“There’s plenty of bakers in Lake Highlands,” she says. “But it’s not a rivalry. Everybody is really nice to each other.”

DeCicco rotates seasonal flavors throughout the year, including pink lemonade cookies in the summer, peppermint chocolate chip cookies during Christmas and king cake cinnamon rolls for Mardi Gras. Her cookies come in a dozen ($26), half a dozen ($14) and a three-pack ($10). Her cinnamon rolls options include a three-tier cake ($50), a dozen ($26), half a dozen ($14), three-pack ($12) and a single jumbo roll ($10).

Her sister-in-law, Krista Harper, also plays a role in the business, preparing gluten-free and diabetic-friendly desserts and pies separately from her own kitchen to avoid cross-contamination.

“Watching Carrie grow her business has been incredible,” Harper says. “When we work markets together, she seems to know almost everyone who stops by, and customers are always raving about her baked goods.”

Salt Sweets, saltsweets.com, 469.274.6164