by Joanne O’Sullivan / photos by Rimas Zailskas

ICING ON THE CUPCAKE: Nancy Corley of the bake-to-order “cupcakery” Morsels in Arden.A cupcake is simple. Sweet. Indulgent. Baked, one presumes, with love. Once a reliable birthday party treat for kids, the cupcake has become something of a cultural touchstone, symbolizing a return to a time of uncomplicated pleasures. Nothing, its frothy, frosted topping tells us, can go wrong when you are eating a cupcake.

After spending decades in obscurity buried in the pages of Betty Crocker cookbooks, cupcakes rode back onto the national foodie scene on the designer coattails of Carrie and the girls from Sex and the City, who famously sat outside Manhattan’s Magnolia Bakery snacking on the sugary confections in haute couture. Borrowing the language of fashion, “cupcake boutiques” started springing up across the country, serving up glamorous treats to “cupcakistas.” The cupcakes had fancy ingredients like dulce de leche and Callebaut cocoa. Now, Sprinkles, a cupcake bar that started in Beverly Hills, has become a national cupcake-chain powerhouse with five new locations and 16 more in the works (including plans for one in Charlotte). Each shop reportedly sells up to 2,000 cupcakes a day. Other fast-growing, bi-coastal bake shops, like Crumbs, work on the same cupcake-focused model.

But while it started in the celebrity stratosphere, the cupcake phenomenon was quickly embraced by the do-it-yourself crowd and the indie crafters who took back domestic arts such as baking and sewing. A loyal community sprung up around the cupcake, rivaled in number perhaps only by devotees of knitting. Like “stitch ‘n’ bitch” nights, there are now “cupcake meetups” in cities all over the U.S. and more than 100 blogs that focus primarily on cupcakes, including My Life in Cake (recent winner of four BlogAsheville awards) by local baker Jodi Rhoden, the owner of the bake-to-order business Short Street Cakes. 

Like many national trends, cupcake mania took its time getting to the mountains. Sometime after opening their first doughnut-centric location on Merrimon Avenue in 2001 (now relocated to the Newbridge Shopping Center on Weaverville Highway), Andrea and Heather McMullen (the sisters of The Sisters McMullen) noticed an increase in the number of bridal clients requesting cupcakes. When they had the opportunity to open a new location at Pack Place, cupcakes seemed a natural way to make the store distinctive, and The Sisters McMullen Cupcake Corner was born in 2006. Rhoden started Short Street Cakes that same year, and Nancy Corley of the bake-to-order “cupcakery” Morsels started her business in the kitchen of the Blake House Inn in Arden earlier this year.

THE GLACE CEILING: The Sisters McMullen, Andrea and Heather, opened the Cupcake Corner in downtown Asheville in 2006.From a business perspective, Heather McMullen says cupcakes are a nearly perfect product. They’re easy to make and sell, and they don’t create a lot of waste. People eat them for breakfast, with lunch or in the late afternoon. Customers will even arrive dressed up for an after-dinner cupcake fix. In other words, there’s a lot of repeat business. The sisters currently sell around 300 cupcakes a day between their two locations, in addition to those they make and sell for parties and special events.

The sisters McMullen say that childhood memories have a lot to do with the cupcake’s comeuppance. Who doesn’t remember the thrill of peeling off the wrapper and taking that first bite of a delicious treat that’s just for you? At the Cupcake Corner, the goods are displayed at eye level, so they’re visible from the street. The sisters report seeing adults with their noses pressed against the glass, gazing at the cupcakes in childlike reverie. 
From a culinary point of view, they inspire creativity. “There’s only so much you can do with cookies, and cupcakes are a little bit more decadent,” says Andrea McMullen. It’s perhaps not surprising then that cupcake bakers now face off in the Iron Cupcake challenge and its global equivalent, Iron Cupcake Earth, both online contests that give bakers a “challenge” ingredient and encourage them to post their recipes and photos on the Web for experts to judge. Competitions like this have spawned the inevitable extreme cupcake recipes. Dark chocolate and bacon anyone? No? How about cigarette-flavored?  Guinness-beer infused?

Rhoden of Short Street Cakes says the cupcake, compared to a cake, has a favorable moist-to-crunchy ratio that could help explain its ascending status in the public’s hearts and mouths. “They bake differently,” she says. “You get a little cake and a lot of crust. People like crust. And you get a lot of icing and a lot of cake in each bite.” And then there are the practical reasons behind the cupcake’s popularity. You don’t need a plate or a fork to eat one. “It’s a portable passion,” says Corley. Self-indulgent self-restraint may be the last word on the subject. Unless it’s been a really bad day, says Andrea McMullen, “one single person can’t eat a whole cake.”

ALT-CUPCAKE: Jodi Rhoden bakes her cupcakes in a retro 1963 Frigidaire Flair oven and makes sugar-free, gluten-free and vegan versions, along with traditional recipes. Rhoden represents the indie end of the Asheville cupcake spectrum, baking her cakes and cupcakes to order out of her home on a 1963 Frigidaire Flair oven given to her by an elderly neighbor. Her products start with local apples, organic local eggs, locally milled organic flour and organic spices. For Rhoden, an activist and former social worker, the choices are not just about the flavor. “It’s about contributing to the local economy and creating a new business model,” she says. “I want to bring other producers along with me.”

Short Street’s menu features homey recipes like carrot spice cake as well as decadent ones such as triple-chocolate ganache. Rhoden makes sugar-free and gluten-free versions of her cupcakes and has vegan recipes as well. “Vegan cooking is a whole different thing,” she says. “You can’t just take a regular recipe and ‘veganize’ it.” Her standard chocolate cake recipe is vegan because it tastes more chocolatey (dairy products mask the taste of the cocoa).

Rhoden, whose cupcakes were featured in Brides magazine earlier this year, emphasizes taste over fancy appearance, foregoing elaborately drawn icing figures in favor of simple swirls or accent flowers grown in her backyard.  Her food-coloring-free icing and cake recipes are “old school Southern” with a different feel from the European tradition of desserts. Her bridal clients tend to be very laid back. “I tell them, if you want your cake to look like a piece of Wedgwood china, I’m not your gal,” she says. 

While she also eschews elaborate icing, Corley of Morsels skews toward the gourmet end of the market. She came to baking after a varied career that included translating Russian  for the army during the Cold War and working as a retail buyer for upscale D.C. department stores. She always had a passion for baking, and when she noticed cupcakes were hot, she thought there might be a way to follow her passion while using her business experience.

Premium flavors such as Madagascar vanilla, European chocolate and seasonal fruits give Corley’s cupcakes a luxurious edge. She, too, has a clear philosophy behind her product. “Use really fine ingredients, but keep it simple. Don’t overbake, and you can’t go wrong,” she says. Corley keeps hydrogenated oils and shortening out of her cupcakes, uses local products (like lavender from Yancey County) and offers some gluten-free items as well.
Morsels’ menu features many cupcakes named after iconic Asheville people and places—the French Broad uses a circa 1870 mahogany cake recipe with a moist chocolate cake base topped with toasted walnuts and caramel frosting; the Clingman is a walnut butter cake with espresso, topped with Irish Mist liquor icing. Thomas Wolfe would surely relish his namesake: a dark chocolate cake with dark bourbon-laced chocolate frosting.

Corley has a definite flair for presentation. Her Celebration Packages, which she delivers to local hotels for arriving guests, come in glossy black-lidded boxes tied with a satin-edge ribbon. Guests can chose a single flavor or get a variety, like a box of chocolates. Clients tell her they’re “better than sex.”

With such widespread appeal, some wonder if cupcakes have become overexposed. The headline of a recent New York Times article asked, “Will Cupcakes Be the New Krispy Kreme?” This invokes comparison to the rapid rise and precipitous fall of the once-trendy doughnut. There are even signs of a “cupcake backlash,” Times reporter Jennifer Lee suggests, citing recent cupcake bans at elementary schools that, as part of an effort to curb childhood obesity, prohibit parents from bringing the treats for classroom birthday celebrations.

If Asheville is any indicator, the cupcake will be around awhile and may even spur a new niche: the cupcake economy. Corley, a trained tea sommelier, is currently looking for a space to open a teahouse and cupcake bakery in the area, and Rhoden is seeking a place for a “sweet little cake shop.” The McMullen sisters report that business is still strong at the Cupcake Corner. In these uncertain times, after all, a cupcake might just offer the sweet, simple reassurance we’re all looking for.