“I still dream of Bill Knapp’s chocolate cake. It was the best,” a dessert enthusiast was overheard saying recently. Despite the restaurant chain’s bankruptcy in 2002, that dream is about to rematerialize on store shelves throughout the Midwest.

Dexter-based Bill Knapp’s, LLC, now owns the rights to Knapp’s namesake baked goods. In February, the phone there rang incessantly as the company prepared to launch its new “unified” version of the cake this month. Managing partner Marty Carrier fielded floods of order requests.

Carrier’s family heritage is deeply planted in the history of Michigan’s baking industry: his grandfather, Thomas Awrey, was one of the founding brothers of Awrey’s Bakery in Livonia. Carrier, who lives in Ann Arbor, explains that Awrey’s began producing baked goods for the Bill Knapp’s restaurants shortly before the eateries closed.

During the intervening years, Awrey’s continued to sell Knapp’s cakes in supermarkets. Four years ago, Carrier’s company acquired the rights to all Bill Knapp’s recipes except the chocolate cake that Awrey’s was making. Instead, they developed their own version of the much-loved cake, using an earlier, vintage Knapp’s recipe.

Some local stores carried the Awrey’s cake; Busch’s and Kroger carried Carrier’s version; and some carried both. Slightly different recipes. Same claim of mouth-watering excellence.

But that changed in mid-February.

“I have all the Bill Knapp’s yellow recipe cards, many of them with remnants of dough clinging to them,” Carrier says. “There were legalities surrounding what we could and couldn’t do with the classic and vintage recipes, so two months ago we bought Awrey’s rights. The cake is now in one big, happy family. We’re unifying the two this month, producing just one cake.”

The Dexter office is only an office–the cakes are still baked at Awrey’s facility in Livonia, and shipped from there to supermarkets. “I was on Awrey Bakery’s first sales call, when the company presented its version of Bill Knapp’s chocolate cake to Meijer’s in 2003,” Carrier recalls. “That’s how I got interested in Bill Knapp’s. I’m pleased to say as of February 15, we are now selling the ‘one and only’ real version of the original Bill Knapp’s chocolate cake.”

Because not everyone’s a chocoholic, Bill Knapp’s LLC also sells the chain’s donut-hole-like “dunkers,” fruit and cinnamon breads, and white cake. “Believe it or not, the white cake accounts for 30 percent of our cake sales,” Carrier says.