Everyday at our West Broadway location we have our loyal customers coming in asking why we decided to shut down our Denman location. After 6 long years in our original cupcakes location at 1116 Denman we made the decision the move down the street and closer to the seawall to 1168 Denman.
We are smaller in size, brighter in color and still baking fresh cupcakes daily. Our happy staff are ready to celebrate any occasion with a cupcake!
This blog is written by Cupcakes very talented one-of-kind pastry chef, Chelsea Rogers.
There’s always a cake or 2 that stands out in my mind every month, and for July it has to be this cake, overflowing with sugar flowers. I love the cool shades of green and white, perfect for an outdoor wedding. The frilly orchids contrast so well with the more geometric hydrangeas, giving a great sense of movement and pattern.One of the first questions I always get when someone sees a cake like this is “how long did that take?”. I generally don’t time my cakes (it would just be too scary!), but I know I spent about 7 hours on the flowers alone. Each petal is individually made by hand from gumpaste, veined, shaped, and dried. Once dried the pieces are assembled and hand tinted with powdered food colouring to achieve the most life-like finish. It’s a lot of work, but hopefully worth it! The best complement I can get is when people think they’re real.
The 2nd question, once people realize the flowers are sugar, is “can I eat the flowers”. My answer is always “yes, but…”. They really aren’t that appetizing. When gumpaste dries it becomes very hard and brittle and small pieces can be quite sharp. Most of the pieces also contain wires as internal support. And there’s no vanilla or other flavourings in the gumpaste to balance out the bitter flavour of the food colouring. So generally, while the flowers are technically edible, you’re better off eating the cake!
This cake was made for Julia, who happens to be the grand-niece of my parent’s neighbour. So, Mum and Dad, this is the cake you keep asking about!
I wanted to have an article about our Build-A-Cake page so I asked our web developer (and now great friend of mine) Chris at BashBang to write me one. Before any of this happened it was my Mom who came to Lori and I with the idea of the build-a-cake page for the website. After 6 long months in the making Chris built this easy to use interactive tool for kids, parents and our creative customers to build their very own celebration cakes. Each custom cake can be built step by step by choosing from a variety of cake flavors, butter cream colors, designs and patterns. To top off your cake you can finish it with a personal message, image or an edible fondant accessory.
Thank you Chris for writing this article for us and to Jim for all of his creative drawings and artwork.
About a year ago Heather&Lori from cupcakes asked me about building a virtual cake building engine. The idea was to create an engine that would allow users to custom build cakes for birthdays, parties or other special events. Apparently it was quite time consuming for the order takers at cupcakes to take these custom orders over the phone. It was difficult to describe each of the many, “many!” cake styles, colors, flavors, decorations, etc. So creating a virtual cake building engine that did the translation was a natural fit for the website. We at BashBang have made several avatar engines in the past and the build-a-cake application is basically the same idea. Have a base model and decorate it with various objects.
I won’t get into all the technical details of how we built this app, but I will say that we designed it in such a way as to allow for easy updates, additions, and changes. We wanted to build an engine that would grow with the company. There’s nothing worse then building an application and having to throw it away after a year because you’ve outgrown it.
Once build-a-cake was launched, we saw an immediate impact on the business. Order takers were saving a lot of time in taking custom cake orders. The other unexpected benefit was we were getting more cake orders, and the average cost per cake was a bit higher. People were using the application to purchase items they’d not normally know Cupcakes had to offer (such as fondant and accessories).
Build-A-Cake has been a huge success for the cupcake girls. They’ve been very happy with the application and we had a blast creating it. It didn’t hurt that we needed “samples” to create all the artwork. The hard part will be working off all the weight we put on during the project.
Our hand-crafted, chic wedding cakes and tiers of cupcakes are created and designed to suit each bride’s theme, colors and flowers to make her wedding a special and memorable occasion. Our creative team of consultants and pastry chefs at Cupcakes will help each step of the way to insure the exact look you want for your big day.
We provide our brides with a complimentary cake tasting that features all our different flavors of cake and buttercream.
Cake pricing will be quoted during the consultation based on the wedding cake size, look and design.
Cupcakes is created and run by Lori Joyce and myself Heather White, we are two best friends who grew up together in Victoria on Vancouver Island. Now thirty-three and thirty-four years of age, our life long dream of starting our own business together has become a reality. Both having a background in sales, Lori and I have worked for various companies dealing with everything from fashion to wastewater treatment.
Rewind back in time to Fall 2001, where we found ourselves working together in New York around the time of the tragic events of September 11th. Ironically, amongst darkness and devastation, Lori and I were inspired to finally make our life long dream come true. It was time to go solo and it became very clear to both of us that our new venture was just about to begin. Our new business concept had to be light, it had to be fresh and it had to be fun, a return to simpler times. There was no question, it had to be, Cupcakes.
Fast Forward to the present and 6 years from its conception, Cupcakes has won a special place in the sweet teeth of Vancouverites. With our three bustling locations to serve our customers, (1168 Denman, 2887 West Broadway and our newest location in Edgemont Village) we try to inspire every new and repeat customer with a mouth full of whimsy. We pride ourselves on our nostalgic trademark and brand that we built using colors like perfect icing pink, soft vanilla and rich chocolaty brown. Once drawn inside by the familiar softly sweet aroma, you are instantly tempted by an array of irresistible confections from the classic top selling “Sweet Sixteen” (vanilla cake with pink icing and pastel sprinkles) to our sinful “Heartthrob” (vanilla and chocolate marble cake with chocolate cream cheese icing and a white chocolate button to top it off) yummm!
Our talented Cupcakes team of 54 staff is busy providing various ideas for weddings, special events and other to-dos with our unique and scrumptious brand of retro cakes and cupcakes. Why is Cupcakes such a hit?
