CITYWIDE For lovers of sweets, it’s the perfect piece of decadent heaven.
For the newly broken-hearted, it’s the perfect escape from the painful realities of life.
For the diet-conscious, it’s a snack that’s just small enough to keep the pangs of guilt away.
The cupcake — it’s the not-so-new culinary invention that has made a comeback in the baked goods scene in recent years; its petite round shape and super sweet topping causing sweets lovers to foam at the mouth.
The latest food craze has hit Santa Monica in the past few months with the opening of two cupcake shops in the downtown area — Le Cupcake in the Santa Monica Place food court and Yummy Cupcakes at 313 Wilshire Blvd.
Such a simple dessert sparking memories of afternoons spent in mom’s kitchen, it’s little wonder why the cupcake has had a resurgence in the past few years.
Le Cupcake co-owner Robyn Savage and many cupcake fanatics believe the dessert’s newfound popularity can be traced to a small bakery in Manhattan.
Magnolia Bakery opened its doors to New York City pastry lovers more than a decade ago in Greenwich Village, but it didn’t start offering cupcakes until a few years later.
“It all started with extra leftover batter from making cake and we were wondering what to do with it,” said Bobbie Lloyd of Magnolia Bakery.
The batter was used to whip up a few batches of cupcakes and word slowly spread throughout the neighborhood that the old fashioned bakery was offering some of the best cupcakes around.
It wasn’t until 2000 when “Sex and the City”characters Miranda Hobbes and Carrie Bradshaw were filmed indulging in Magnolia cupcakes that a star was reborn.
“They’re the mother of all cupcake shops,” Savage said on Friday. “There are about 10 cupcake shops in New York City now.”
But not every hot item on the market comes from New York City.
The Academic Chair of Culinary Arts and Management at the Arts Institute of California-Los Angeles, Chef Christophe Bernard, has a different theory about how the frenzy started. The Arts Institute, located in Santa Monica, recently launched a new pastry and baking program.
The resurgence of cupcakes can be attributed to the Los Angeles catering companies that provided cupcakes as a dessert to parties and weddings. Demand for the cupcake slowly caught on as guests enjoyed the childhood memory of biting into a cupcake.
“This is something that is hip and trendy at parties,” said Bernard, who once catered 70 to 80 cupcakes for a woman’s 89th birthday party. “There is a lot of flexibility in creating cupcakes and that is the beauty of the cupcake. You can customize to the need of the customer.”
“California is the trendsetter,” Bernard said.
Many businesses across the country have jumped on the cupcake bandwagon, developing their own unique brand of the 200-year-old snack.
It’s what Mark Libertini and his business partners had in mind when they launched the Little Cupcake Bake Shop in the Bay Ridge community of Brooklyn in a predominantly Italian neighborhood.
“You hear about how there are too many cupcake places in New York,” Libertini said. “There are quite a few cupcake places but each one of them has something slightly different.”
The cupcake frenzy has taken over Los Angeles, with cupcake shops like Sprinkles in Beverly Hills attracting a celebrity following.
Yummy Cupcakes owner Tiffini Soforenko anticipates more cupcake shops will pop up in the next few years and eventually die down. But she wouldn’t call the resurgent popularity of cupcakes a “trend.”
“When people see success, people will try to copy,” she said. “Only the truly good will stay.”
Los Angeles is the logical place for the cupcake shops to catch on, said Savage, who called Los Angeles “the second biggest city in terms of cupcakes-only shops.”
“Cupcakes generate the memory of your childhood and [plays] on people’s natural affinity for cake,” Savage said.
Morgan Jenkins has paid visits to both Magnolia Bakery in New York City and Sprinkles in Beverly Hills. It was her first time at Le Cupcake Friday morning.
Spending the day shopping, Jenkins stopped in the food court when the colorful display at Le Cupcake caught her eye.
Does the cupcake evoke memories of her childhood and her mother’s baked goods?
“No, they’re a lot better,” she said.
INTERNET PHENOM TO SANTA MONICA PLACE Drawing from the success of the Internet-based business, Le Cupcake opened its doors in Santa Monica in November 2006.
The business was the brainchild of Manhattan Beach resident Doug Davidge and his younger sister Savage, who started the original Le Cupcake from her Virginia home kitchen in the summer of 2003.
It was after a visit to Magnolia Bakery when Savage decided to start her own cupcake business.
A friend in advertising designed the company logo — a small cupcake topped with a swirl. Savage fell in love with the logo and decided to use the swirl on all the cupcakes.
The business continued at a steady pace until October 2005 when lifestyles Web site Daily Candy wrote a raving review about Le Cupcake.
“My phone was ringing off the hook,” Savage said.
What started as a small Internet-based business turned into a phenomenon as Le Cupcake started compiling a list of clients that included the White House,Justice Department and Senator Hillary Clinton’s Office.
In the months following, Davidge sold his sports wear company that he ran successfully for 20 years and started looking for his next big venture when he set his sights on Le Cupcake.
“It was a concept I thought could compete with a Wetzel’s Pretzels or Mrs. Fields — an under $3 snack,” Davidge said on Friday. “I was looking for a mall that would give us great exposure.”
They landed a goldmine in Santa Monica Place where the food court is always packed and scores of potential clients cross the intersection of the Third Street Promenade and Broadway every time the light changes.
“It seems liked a great place to get tourists and locals and test the concepts,”Davidge said.
The actual Le Cupcake store offers more variety than its online counterpart, which Savage still runs from her home in Virginia.
Whereas the online Le Cupcake offers only vanilla and chocolate cupcakes, the Santa Monica shop sells eight different flavors — Van Gogh Vanilla, Chocolate, Parisian Peanut Butter, Banana Bonbon, Velvet Rouge, La Coconut, Tres Tres Fraise and Tour De Carotte.
Each cupcake costs $2.75 and the most popular is the Velvet Rouge, also known as Red Velvet.
Setting Le Cupcake apart from its competitors is extra care by employees to ensure cupcakes are beautiful when they go from the display case, to the box, to the mouths of its consumers.
“It’s the care that goes into them from taste to aesthetic value,” Savage said.
FROM THE VALLEY TO SANTA MONICA A 16-year career at Universal as the director of operations ended in 2004 when Soforenko decided she wanted to switch to a profession that allowed her to spend more time with her family and allow her to engage more with customers.
Cupcakes just seemed like a good fit, Soforenko said.
She started catering cupcakes for weddings in March 2004, working seven days a week in a commercial kitchen in the San Fernando Valley.
Weddings led to catering events for movie studios in the valley, which ultimately led Soforenko to open the Yummy Cupcakes shop in Burbank in December 2005 for her movie clientele. In March, Soforenko opened her second store on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica.
Setting Yummy Cupcakes apart from its competitors is the size of its menu, which features 105 different cupcake combinations. The shop offers 13 of the same cupcakes — its “regulars” — every day along with a set of four special cupcakes that changes every day.
Friday’s special was the carrot cream cheese, chocolate malt, lemon drop and chocolate cherry chunk.
The cakes range in price from $2.50 to $3. Cupcakes are made fresh every day in the kitchen. Every cupcake is made from fresh ingredients, including the carrot cake which is made from carrots grated on site. Much of the produce is purchased from the many local farmers’ markets.
The cupcakes are made throughout the day to keep the baked goods tasting fresh. Baking stops about two hours prior to closing. Leftover are either turned into biscottis, donated to shelters or given away to the employees.
Both the Burbank and Santa Monica stores have attracted a large celebrity following, including Diane Keaton, Eva Longoria, and Jennifer Garner. Days of our Lives actress Kristian Alfonso is a regular and was in the Santa Monica store the other day recommending cupcakes to customers, Soforenko said.
Former Family Matters star Jaleel White was also in the same store this week, offering to buy cupcakes for the customers standing in line.
Like many of the cupcake shops in Los Angeles, Yummy Cupcakes sells its product with a thick layer of frosting, though customers can request to have their cake slathered with less sugar.
But for Soforenko, who often locks up the store with a spoonful of frosting in her mouth, there’s nothing better than a cupcake piled high with frosting.
“To me, a cupcake with little frosting is not a cupcake,” she said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 5, 2007. Read the original PDF.