Patty's Cakes & Desserts Celebrates 35 Years

 On October 14, 2020, Patty’s Cakes & Desserts celebrates 35 years in business and ten years at its storefront in Fullerton, California. In addition to its regular menu of fresh-baked offerings, the award-winning bakery debuts a full lineup of gluten-free and vegan cupcakes available daily. They recently introduced new flavors like Very Berry Strawberry, Snickerdoodle, Blueberry Pancake, S’mores, and Chocolate Caramel Salty. With nearly 100 flavors of iced-to-order cupcakes available daily, Patty’s Cakes & Desserts offers one of the largest and most comprehensive cupcake menus in the country.

 

In 1985, Patty Gomez started her business as a single mother from her home kitchen. Her passion for baking and cake artistry began as a home-spun hobby and has since grown into one of Orange County's most established and respected bakeries. Her expertise has earned her bakery national recognition as a nine-time recipient for both The Knot’s Best of Weddings Award (2012-2020) and WeddingWire’s Couples’ Choice Award (2012-2020). Before its brick-and-mortar location, Patty’s Cakes & Desserts held an exclusive dessert cake contract for Disneyland’s prestigious Club 33 for four years.

 

“It’s amazing to look back and see how far this company has come in 35 years,” comments founder, Patty Gomez, who was honored as the Fullerton Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business of the Year in 2015. “I’m so grateful for our growing community who’s supported us through this journey and has trusted us to make their celebrations special.”

 

With the help of her son Philip Gomez, Patty opened her brick-and-mortar location in Fullerton in 2010 and expanded her offerings to include iced-to-order cupcakes and fresh-baked cookies and cake balls, as well as elegant multi-tiered cakes. Today, Patty’s Cakes & Desserts offers nearly 100 varieties of cupcakes, including 50 regular, 21 vegan, and 20 gluten-free flavors, all of which are available daily for takeout and delivery.

 

The Fullerton-based bakery has also launched its own delivery fleet in response to a 350% increase in delivery requests due to the COVID-19 stay-at-home order.

 

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Unicorn Cupcake Spotted on Reddit

 Sometimes I browse Reddit and today I spotted this photo.

Unicorn cupcakes 🦄 from r/cupcakes

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Cake Mix Creations From An Eight Year Old

Some people have so much disdain for cake mixes, but that is how I first learn to bake.  I had an Easy Bake Oven  when I was a little girl. Later, I would make cakes on the weekend just for fun when I was in high school.  It didn't make if it Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker.  On Epicurious.com, a mom does a review of Miss Jones Baking Co. organic cake mix.  Her daughter has taken the cake mix to new heights.

Starting with cake mix doesn’t mean you’re bound to the standard recipe, though. There’s plenty of room to doctor up these mixes. And I’d argue that the results are better than the original. The two best desserts we have come up with using Miss Jones’ products are a chocolate-coffee-cardamom snack cake, because cardamom is my favorite spice, and a blood-orange-poppy-seed loaf cake (tips for both are below). The former has a moist and decadent texture—without much more time, effort, or ingredients than the box’s instructions require. The latter is rich and dense (in a good way) because of the inclusion of Greek yogurt and makes for a perfect breakfast. (Should you not have blood oranges, any citrus will do. That said, their juice turns everything a very pleasant pink.)

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The Beautiful Chaos of Ugly Cakes

The blog, Cake Wrecks, is a pioneer in showcasing ugly cakes.  You can often see many cake fails on Reddit or the Netflix tv show, 'Nailed It'.  

Bettina Makalintal writes for Vice about the ugly cakes on Instagram.

This is the appeal of the Instagram cakes heaped with globs of garish frosting, photographed with a harsh shine—at times, unsettlingly zoomed in. Welcome to the lurid side of cake Instagram, where there are no blankets of fondant, no buttercream spackled into submission, and no faux marble surface for naturally lit flatlays. This is the part of Instagram where food gets weird.

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Eggs and Flour: The Difference Between Yellow and White Cake

 A lot of people use yellow cake and white cake interchangebly, but they are not one and the same.  A recent post on Chowhound spells out the difference between yellow and white cake.  The two main differences are eggs and flour.  For yellow cakes,  most recipes call for whole eggs, and for white cakes only egg whites are used.  Another difference is flour.  For white cakes, a cake flour is often used whereas all purpose flour can be used for yellow cake.

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New Bakery Opening in Brooklyn Next Week

Love, Nelly is opening next Wednesday, July 22nd in Brooklyn. Keavy Landreth and Allison Kave,  the team behind the boozy milkshake and dessert bar in Crown Heights, Butter & Scotch, will bring a new bakery focused on Colombian and Latin American treats to the border of Bed-Stuy and East Bushwick called, Love, Nelly.

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Christmas in July Cupcakes

Santa’s Bag brimming with holiday cookies, Chocolate Peppermint Bundt Cake, and Chocolate Peppermint and Gingerbread Brownies are just some of the new scrumptious freshly made baked goods for the holidays from Bake Me A Wish, the leading national online gourmet gifting company. Bakemeawish.com has your entire gift list covered with favorite holiday staples such as mini and jumbo decorative holiday cupcakes to new confections including: 

• Santa’s Bag: Holiday Cookies & Chocolates 
• Chocolate Peppermint Bundt Cake
• Christmas Tree & Star Shaped Snack Trays
• NEW Chocolate Peppermint and Gingerbread Brownies/Blondies
• Holiday Cookies: Snowmen and Candy Canes
  
  
  

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Thriving or Surviving: Cupcake Bakery Owners During COVID-19

BAKERY OWNERS: How have you changed your business due to COVID-19? Do you do more delivery? takeout? catering? Is your business on Door Dash or Uber Eats? Are you shipping cupcakes across the country? I have been seeing more delivery and takeout but I wonder if it has been enough to keep businesses afloat. Please leave a comment below. I will be doing a round-up on this blog in a couple of weeks.

By the way, if you want to audio comment, you can do so on my Anchor podcast, Nichelle Newsltter.  Press the message button which is the right button next to the Listen on Spotify button.

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Introducing Nichelle Newsletter

Hi All,

It's Nichelle of Cupcakes Take The Cake.  I haven't been posting here much. I have a new project which is my food and culture newsletter, Nichelle Newsletter.  I publish it weekly. You can subscribe below.



Here's a sample of this week's newsletter.

Grillshare 

I have a wonderful idea that came from the kindness of my friends and neighbors. I bought some bison dogs from Iron Bison, a local farm. However, I don’t have a grill. My neighbor has a propane grill outside his shed and I borrow it for less than an hour to grill the hot dogs and a pepper. So my idea is to have a grill share for the neighborhood.

Shandys

My new favorite summer cocktail is a shandy. What’s a shandy?! A shandy is beer mixed with a lemon or a lemon-lime flavored beverage. A bartender friend gave me a quart of watermelon shrub, and I mixed it with a wheat beer. Then I had a cucumber simple syrup which pairs nicely with an IPA and a splash of lemonade. Here’s a recipe for a Mean Shandy that includes bourbon.

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Cupcake Hack Using Cake Mix

Using cake mix as opposed to scratch baking is nothing new. However, since the Covid pandemic, finding baking ingredients has been a struggle.  Baking sourdough bread is a food trend that has taken off.  Anyway, cake mix hacks have a found a new home on TikTok.  Karly Stoddard (IG is @mrskarlystoddard) posted a cake mix hack to bake cupcakes that has over 1M views so far.   Buzzfeed wrote about it, so I am sharing it here as well.

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Banana Pudding Cupcake

My Dad loves it when I make banana pudding.  Banana pudding is traditional southern dessert. It's relatively easy and inexpensive to make but the Nilla wafers are about $5/box.  Today I found these  banana pudding cupcakes on Reddit.

Banana Pudding Cupcakes - vanilla cupcake with banana cream pudding filling, whipped cream icing, nilla wafer and banana chip from r/cupcakes

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Blockchain Honey from Bee K'onscious

Artisanal honey from Denver is probably not anything new. What's interesting about this honey is how the company is using blockchain technology to verify the provenance of the honey.  Now I have heard of using blockchain as a way to verify copyrighted photos and publications online.  Blockchain is often used for digital assets, but using it for honey is pretty interesting.

Denver-based startup Bee K’onscious Artisanal Honey is now selling its nutritious raw honey online. Each jar of Bee K’onscious’s single-origin honey is sourced from the finest beekeepers around the world, with a QR-coded label that allows customers to scan and trace the honey to the single beekeeper who produced it. The “hive to home” honey brand has partnered with TagOne a provider of blockchain technology, to provide customers the ability to ensure the source of the jar is producing 100% pure, unfiltered, unpasteurized, non-blended honey.

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Waiting in Line For A Cupcake is So Over

We started this blog in 2004, and we were there for the cupcake craze.  No one waits an hour in line for a cupcake at Georgetown Cupcakes,  Magnolia or Sprinkles in 2020.  Sorry, Kellyanne.

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Dough Providing Frontline Sweets

I love Dough doughnuts! When I lived in Brooklyn, I would go there often to treat myself. Dough is supporting frontline workers in New York with delicious desserts.

Today I got a press release for what they are doing.

Dough Doughnuts has also used their Frontline Sweet Support to recently create Doughnut & Coffee Breaks, partnering with Kids for Kids NYC, NY Loves Coffee, Noshes for Nurses, Jill Zarin, Ally Shapiro, and Owyn to bring doughnut and coffee breaks to some of the hardest hit hospitals. With the joint efforts were able to bring hundreds of items to hundreds of doctors and nurses for a quick coffee and sweets break during hard days.
“Food may be for the body, but desserts feed your soul.” By fueling the frontline, Frontline Sweet Support has created a way for people to spread compassion and kindness and say thank you when you physically cannot. Starting with the staff at Lenox Hill hospital, they created a way to make a huge impact by mobilizing their efforts to deliver NYC’s favorite sweets to the workers of the tri state area. They are thrilled to be sending hugs, good vibes and smiles through their services.

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For Goodness Sakes, Look At Those Cakes

Two weeks ago, my friends Joa and Melissa’s suggested baking on Sundays. Last weekend was the Super Bowl, so we didn’t bake, but yesterday, we did. First I made a run to Kroger for White Lily Flour, white sugar, confectioners sugar and eggs.  Then I went over to Joa and Melissa's to bake.  We poured through cookbooks to find the right recipe for pound cake. Some recipe require so many eggs (six eggs and six egg yolks is too much).

 There’s an old cookbook from the Masters that had the perfect recipe. For the glaze, I employed Nicole Taylor’s recipe from her cookbook, The Up South Cookbook: Chasing Dixie in a Brooklyn Kitchen.  It was my first time using a silicone bundt pan, and I was fearful. I am used to greasing and flouring a cake pan. I was surprised at how well it turned out. The recipe instructions has the baking temperature at 300F which is low for baking cakes. The baking took over 90 minutes but it worked. 

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Going out of business sale: Bella Cupcake Couture

This is a guest post by Carrie McIlveen of cupcake wrapper company Bella Cupcake Couture, offering a huge discount for our readers who want to decorate their cupcakes. See below for examples of their cupcake wrappers.



Bringing Bella Cupcake Couture to life is one of the greatest joys I’ve had in my life. It‘s been a fantastic journey; from special events and features with Martha Stewart and Ellen DeGeneres to celebrating Mickey Mouse‘s 90th birthday and hosting Seattle Cupcake Camp three years in a row.



We’ve made amazing friends with the folks at Cupcakes Take the Cake, Cakespy, Bakerella, Java Cupcake and too many cupcake shops to name.





But sometimes life changes and some changes have to be made with it. So, we are having a going out of business sale with considerable discounts for all.



Enter the code CTTC2019 to receive 50% off your order on our site at https://www.cupcakewrap.com



Also, if you are interested in purchasing the company and would like more information, please contact the owner Carrie via email at carriemcilveen@outlook.com

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Ciao, Gloria: New Project by Renato Poliafito

Renato Poliafito, who co-founded Baked, is opening up a new cafe in Brooklyn. It will open up in Prospect Heights and featured classic desserts. Support his Kickstarter!

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Baileys Irish Cream St. Patrick's Day cupcakes at Swirlz in Chicago

Swirlz Cupcakes in Chicago will be selling Baileys Irish Cream cupcakes for St. Patrick's Day this Friday and Saturday, March 15-16, or for pre-order. Via their Facebook page. They will also be selling mint chocolate chip cupcakes. Visit their website at swirlzcupcakesshop.com for more details.

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Women's History Month cupcakes at Sprinkles, plus shamrock and Flaming Hot Cheetos cupcakes

Sprinkles Cupcakes, which has locations across the United States, is selling four limited edition Women's History Month white chocolate raspberry cupcakes this March, starting today, March 4, and ending March 24. They have three different sayings celebrating women and girls. From March 4 to 10, they're selling a pink cupcake that says "Who Runs The World? Girls" and from March 11 to 17, they're selling a cupcake that says "She believed she could. so she did." Then from March 18 to 24 they're selling a cupcake that says "Be You For You Do You." Finally, from March 25 to 31 to round out the month they're selling a Girl Power cupcake (actual letters: GRL PWR). Get all the details on their site.



They also have some seasonal cupcakes. From March 4 to 17, they also have a shamrock cupcake for St. Patrick's Day, which has a chocolate cake base on the bottom plus green mint frosting and it's studded with mint dark chocolate M&Ms.



And I'm not sure exactly what these are celebrating but coming up they also have Flaming Hot Cheetos cupcakes! According to their website, those have a vanilla cake, which is cored and filled with Flaming Hot Cheetos, plus white cheddar cheese frosting and even more Flaming Hot Cheetos on top. Talk about a spicy cupcake!



You can follow their website, where you can sign up for their mailing list to see what their latest specials are, and follow them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

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Cupcakes in jars by mail from Brooklyn Cupcake via Goldbelly

Yesterday I got a wonderful surprise when I opened my front door to see a huge box from mail order food company Goldbelly! It was from a friend who I did a favor for, and inside were these adorable cupcakes in jars by bakery Brooklyn Cupcake.



Goldbelly offers 13 different flavors of these cupcakes by mail. What my friend didn't know is that while I live in New Jersey now, I used to live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, within walking distance of Brooklyn Cupcake (they also have a location in Hollywood, Florida at the Yellow Green Farmers Market). I often wear my Brooklyn Cupcake t-shirt and it always makes me smile, so I was thrilled to get these six jars.

The only downside, in my opinion, is that nowhere in the packaging did it say what type of cupcake it was, but I concluded that it was a chocolate cake with caramel and some kind of very light whipped frosting with coconut. Before posing this, I asked my friend what kind they were and it turns out they were Samoa cupcakes. The official description of them is: "Chocolate cake with our signature coconut cream cheese frosting layered with our coconut custard (Flan) and caramel drizzel topped with toasted coconut..."

I shared one of the jars, eating it with a spoon, and it was delicious. There's really a lot of cupcake in each one. You could eat it yourself, or easily split it.

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