Sara Ross, the cupcake mistress of Kickass Cupcakes in Somerville, Mass., decided to run a contest in honor of her bakery's second anniversary in November. Ross had a lot to celebrate. The platinum blonde transplant from Los Angeles to Boston had built a thriving cupcake practice from scratch. Kickass now had a steady stream of devotees, with dependable daily special orders and busy foot traffic, excellent word of mouth and great press.
Ross is the kind of cupcake baker who could not sleep at night unless she used all natural ingredients, Taza chocolate, fair-trade vanilla beans, homemade marshmallows and hand-squeezed lemons. Beyond the various mix 'n' matches of chocolate and vanilla, (why anyone opts for vanilla frosting on a chocolate cake I've never understood), Kickass has trend-twisting cupcake choices –– a mojito, a caramel macchiato, a banana cream, cinnamon chai, as well as German chocolate, red velvet and the "lucky" cupcake –– a luscious lemon cupcake with white chocolate butter-cream and candied ginger that comes with a fortune baked inside. Just to make everyone happy in this college town, she offers several daily options for vegans and gluten-free cupcake lovers. Clearly, Kickass is a cupcake lover's destination.
So, it made perfect sense for Ross to hold a cupcake contest to mark two years of tiny cakes. The call went out in early November to the Somerville and Cambridge cupcake community for recipes that read well and tasted even better. The winner would receive a dozen free cupcakes a month for a year.
That was adequate inducement for Kickass Cupcakes to receive more than 250 recipes from Facebook and other sites, and 100 or so more from sticky-fingered patrons coming into the store and filling out a bona fide recipe ballot while cramming a cupcake into their mouths.
Reading over the entries showed it was a pretty literate crowd. One cupcake lover, less adept at menu writing skills, Antonio Santos (age 4) had his eye on the cupcake prize too. He suggested the "Yumiest (sic) Cupcake Ever" with yummy cookie batter, chocolate frosting and chocolate sprinkles. (He didn't win, but he did get an honorable mention.)
Kickass Cupcake selection process
The "committee" of Kickass employees, slightly overwhelmed by the volume, closed the call for submissions in late November and went to work. Ross said, "The first part was easy –– eliminating similar ideas or things we'd already done. There was a lot of overlap." The first sort narrowed it down to 56.
Then, the prize committee went to work thinking about the practicalities. What could they make? What would sell? How many versions of a chocolate cupcake would the traffic bear? "There were lots of versions of a banana split in cupcake form, but how many people really want Foster flambe in a cupcake?" The tea and crumpets idea was good, but Ross and her team concluded that it was too subtle for most cupcake eaters' palates.
Tough love slimmed the list to six. Ross tried to limit herself to five options that she would send to her "celebrity" judges –– 16 Boston-area food writers, but she was unable to winnow any further. With six, it was hard core.
Kickass Cupcakes, Somerville, Mass. Photo by Louisa Kasdon
The cupcakes went out in their cute little boxes, and the results were faxed back crumb-less. By a slight margin, Darci Hanna's kulfi cupcake took the prize: A fragrant confection of white cake, ground pistachios, cardamom and white cream cheese frosting topped with candied pistachios and a dusting of cardamom.
Sounds great, and obviously delectable to a food writer. But kulfi -- Indian ice cream -- over chocolate? Get real. Especially when the other option was Candize Cruz Dintino's "Somerville Sensation" an espresso-based cake with a homemade marshmallow at its center, frosted with a blend of Nutella and Marshmallow Fluff.
And here's the moral of the tale: Don't mess with chocolate and don't trust the food writers. Although there's nothing wrong with kulfi, the second-place Somerville Sensation has been outselling the kulfi approximately six to one. Chocolate rules.
Endnote: (Urban legend has it that Marshmallow Fluff was invented in Somerville, Mass., but my husband says that his paternal grandfather, a baker in Lynn, Mass., really invented Fluff there, before the bakery moved south to Somerville.)
Louisa Kasdon is a Boston-based food writer and former restaurant owner. She is a columnist for the Boston Phoenix, the food editor for Stuff Magazine and has contributed to MORE, Cooking Light, the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine and The Christian Science Monitor, among others.
Top photo of winning cupcakes by Kickass Cupcakes
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