About Sweet Dream Desserts & Catering
Your Small-Town Bakery With Big-Time Taste
Sweet Dream Desserts & Catering is a friendly, small-town bakery and catering service famous for our delicious center-filled cupcakes, unlike anything you’ll find in those expensive cafés in Chicago’s trendy neighborhoods. Plus, we’re close enough that you can come back for more anytime.
But we're not just a cupcake joint! Sycamore native and owner, Deanna Watkins, opens the doors each morning to serve Continental-style breakfast fare such as scones and sweet breads, while her husband, Chef Phil, prepares the day's catering orders.
We also boast a variety of homemade cookies just like grandma used to make, plus other desserts. And we bake full-sized cakes and cheesecakes for any occasion – from baby showers to birthdays to weddings, or for no occasion at all.
Can't stop in for a bite? Let Chef Phil bring our catering service to you. From a simple summer BBQ to an elegant plated meal, Sweet Dream Desserts & Catering has a full menu of meal options to satisfy your taste and budget. From appetizers to soup to dinner and dessert, we've got you covered.
Let us make your ordinary day a sweet dream and your dreams a sweet memory.
About Deanna and Phil
“I can’t even guess how many cakes I’ve done, but I get teased that I have more pictures of cakes than I do of my children.” – Deanna Watkins, Sweet Dream Desserts & Catering Founder.
Deanna is the Cake Lady — the executive baker, head designer, and lead dreamer at Sweet Dream Desserts. Deanna is an artist at heart and she is always looking for new ideas and new challenges. She can make any design and she’ll bake any dessert on request.

Born and raised in Sycamore, she learned to bake from her mother Doris, a talented Cake Lady in her own right, but she learned to love it from her sister Mandy. Some of her best memories are baking fresh pies using apples and cherries off the trees in the backyard of their childhood home and perfecting Texas sheet cakes, lemon bars, cookies, and many other recipes in the family kitchen. Deanna and Mandy have always baked Christmas cookies together, and they continue the family tradition to this day. Stop by Sweet Dream Desserts during the holidays to enjoy a few of their favorites.
While living in Idaho for seven years, after graduating Sycamore High School and spending a few years in college, Deanna met Sweet Dream’s Chef Phil in a restaurant where the two worked. Phil won Deanna over as he flipped pancakes flirtatiously. “I was so excited to marry a chef, because I only liked baking and I needed someone to cook for me.”
Phil is the chef — the connoisseur of cuisine, the head of catering operations, and the spice master. Chef Phil makes the fine cuisine for weddings and special events that Sweet Dreams caters throughout the area. As executive chef, he can execute meals for thousands of guests.
Phil grew up in the Rockies, but he has worked with some of the country’s best chefs in restaurants from Denver to New Orleans and along the West Coast. Phil’s passion is food (and football — Go Broncos!). He loves making and perfecting sauces and he has a knack with spices.
Deanna and Phil married, and with the arrival of their first daughter, the couple decided to move closer to family in the little town Deanna loved as a child (that’s Sycamore, in case you weren’t paying attention). Soon they welcomed their second daughter, and they’ve been a part of Sycamore’s community ever since.
Deanna’s done everything, from checkout clerking at 7-Eleven to moving boxes around a warehouse at 3M to designing and selling her own line of greeting cards. All the while she was baking, frosting, and decorating delicious and beautiful cakes for customers who couldn’t keep the best sweets in town a secret for long. Chef Phil’s made a name for himself in the area, too — he’s a real Man Who Cooks in the annual 50 Men Who Cook fundraiser presented by the KishHealth System to benefit the children of DeKalb County.
What began as a hobby has become a passion for Deanna. She dreamed of (and planned!) a dessert shop of her own for 15 years and finally realized her dream by opening Sweet Dream Desserts in 2006. The shop was greeted with rave reviews and quickly developed a group of loyal fans and customers. The sweetest dreams of all are those that come true.
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