Books to Baking: bondbons

Courtney Bond
Washburn Rural High School English Teacher
bondbons Owner

While teaching comes with many rewards, a huge salary is not one of them. Courtney Bond and her husband, Randall, found that although their combined teaching incomes created a comfortable lifestyle for them, lingering student debt still hung over their heads. Seeking a creative way to tackle their debt that “wasn’t going anywhere,” Courtney found her saving grace: cake balls. Courtney decided to turn her baking hobby into a business.

She introduced her new business, bondbons, in a Facebook post right before Valentine’s Day in 2014, marketing her homemade cake balls for the holiday. She began taking orders from close friends and family that responded to the post.

Even though holiday orders were good, Courtney says she had her doubts about whether she could keep up the momentum.

“I told my husband, ‘I don’t think anyone is going to order from me again,’” she said, worried that the holiday rush had passed, and maybe the business along with it.

But an order for a wedding shower came through, and another, and another. bondbons took off, and now, six years later, Courtney is busier making cake balls than she ever dreamed she would be. As the business increased, the debt decreased, and the couple celebrated being debt-free 38 months later.

If you would have told her when she first got married that she would one day be a baker, Courtney says she probably would have laughed it off.

“I had no culinary experience. I didn’t even know how to cook when we got married. This is all self-taught,” she said.

As a lover of art, Courtney may never have considered herself a baker before, but it is something she is proud of today. Her favorite part of what she does with bondBons—except maybe taste testing new recipes—is the success she has achieved through something unexpected.

“This is something I’m very proud of,” Courtney said. “We had a need as a family, and I had this idea that has become successful. at is super special to me.”

As an English teacher at Washburn Rural High School, Courtney spends much of her time after school grading papers and reading the books she assigns to her students, as well as coaching cheer for the Cair Paravel Lions. When 9 p.m. hits, and her two kids, Katelyn and Jackson are in bed, she works until midnight baking, rolling, dipping and packaging her baked goods to fill customers’ orders.

Courtney is taking her business to the next level by offering private cake pop classes out of her home, and she has recently finished writing her first novel and hopes to have it published soon.

Even though bondbons is thriving and growing, Courtney says she doesn’t have plans to quit her day job of teaching to bake full time.

“I just love teaching too much,” Courtney said. “I could never give that up.”