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Cuckcoo over cupcakes
SQUIRREL HILL – Slow down or you just might miss a tiny slice of serendipity nestled between two storefronts on busy Murray Avenue near its intersection with Forbes.
And the word “tiny” is by no means exaggeration.
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So why are people going cuckoo over cupcakes? Step inside to see – better, smell – why. The aroma of freshly baked cake wafts through the bakery as a few customers linger to enjoy the sensory experience. Even the folks behind the counter are genuinely happy to be at work.
“It’s such a fun place to be,” says Sora Borensztein of Squirrel Hill, who started working at Dozen three weeks after it opened. The best part about the job, she adds, is eating the “uglies,” or the cupcake mistakes that can’t be sold.
Business is brisk for a mid-day Wednesday, as box after box of cupcakes are carried out the door. One woman needs a shopping bag to carry her purchase.
“We’re sort of creating cupcakes outside the box, if you will, and we don’t use the box, you know. They’re from scratch,” chuckles owner and baker James Gray, seated at one of the narrow shop’s only three tables.
The 700-square-foot space – kitchen included – previously housed an incense and Asian imports shop and required a complete renovation to accommodate the plumbing and cooking equipment – and to rid the shop of the incense odor.
The cupcake-only menu rotates daily, and being Wednesday, the offerings include root beer float, chocolate-covered almond, asteroids – featuring Cocoa Puffs cereal – and the popular Emily, a vanilla cake topped with light-blue royal icing and white nonpareils. The cupcake, Gray adds, was named for a friend who is a “shabby-chic kind of gal.”
Using only the finest ingredients – Belgian chocolates, Nielsen-Massey vanilla and pure sweet-cream butter – and creating flavor combinations that are not available elsewhere are secrets to the fledgling business’ popularity.
Cupcakes, once reserved for bake-sale tables and kids’ parties, have become downright trendy. They’re even being served at the most elegant of social affairs, wedding receptions included. Dozen, in fact, is catering weddings nearly every Saturday this summer through August, Gray said.
“It’s fun, it’s very elegant and different on a table,” he said. “A lot of the people who are doing this are young, more urban, hip, and they want to do something unique and memorable.”
Cupcakes were created around the 19th century, but there seem to be two theories regarding their origin. One has to do with the amount of ingredients used – a cup of flour, a cup of butter, a cup of sugar. The other involves the utensils used to bake the cakes, which were small, individual, earthenware or clay cups.
Hostess, incidentally, introduced its now-famous cupcake in 1919, but it wasn’t until 1950 that the vanilla creme filling was added, along with the trademark seven-squiggle icing drizzled across the top.
The cupcake craze, it seems, is here to stay.
Gray and business partner David Wojtonik, both from Chicago, are banking on it.
Gray, who attended the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago and who also has a master’s degree in education, moved to Pittsburgh a year ago with the intent of teaching high school English. Facing a tight job market, he instead rented a church kitchen and started selling cupcakes via the Internet. Before he knew it, he was filling cupcake orders several times a week.
Gray began thinking. New York has Magnolia, and Chicago has Cupcakes, Sweet Mandy B’s and others. He was about to give Pittsburgh its first cupcake bakery.
Or was he?
Coco’s Cupcake Café in Shadyside opened a week before Dozen and considers itself Pittsburgh’s first cupcake café.
To that, Gray said, “I like to say we were Pittsburgh’s first cupcake because we started catering in October.”
Regardless, Gray has found his niche, and Dozen is selling – at $2.50 apiece – between 3,500 and 4,000 cupcakes weekly. He’s already considering plans to open a second location in the Pittsburgh area.
A typical day at Dozen begins between 5:30 and 6 a.m. The commercial convection oven can accommodate as many as 10 dozen cupcakes at a time. The cakes bake at a low 300 degrees, while a high fan speed ensures even baking.
Dozen’s decadent chocolate cupcake is a customer favorite, Gray said. While he wouldn’t divulge the ingredients in the proprietary recipe, he did say sour cream enhances the batter’s thick and rich consistency.
Unlike traditional bakeries, which tend to produce light and airy cupcakes, Dozen specializes in a denser, heartier variety.
“As a result, when you’re done eating one of the cupcakes, you feel like you’ve eaten a piece of cake,” Gray said. “You feel completely satisfied. You don’t need another one.”
Dozen’s cupcakes are topped with one of three icings: American buttercream, ganache or royal. Lemon juice gives the royal its light, fresh flavor, Gray adds.
Gray uses a pastry bag to pipe American buttercream atop some root beer float cupcakes. Root beer syrup, he says, gives the cake its subtle bubbly root beer flavor, while a pirouette cookie in the top completes the soda fountain look.
While conceding that a piping bag requires hand-eye coordination, “the decorating part is the real fun part for us,” Gray said.
All the bakers at Dozen are encouraged to come up with cupcake creations, Gray said. New flavors are typically introduced on Mystery Flavor Fridays. Among the more uncommon choices were spicy chocolate for Valentine’s Day, which featured a chocolate ganache rolled in a spicy sugar, and Margarita, a royal icing containing tequila with the edges rolled in sugar and salt. Beer lovers might enjoy Saturday’s feature, East End Chocolate Stout, made with, you guessed it – beer – from East End Brewery.
“You almost forget you’re eating a piece of cake,” Gray says.
White Chocolate Cupcakes with Peppermint Buttercream
• Ingredients
6 ounces white chocolate
41/2 large egg whites
1/4 cup milk, plus 3/4 cup
11/2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups cake flour
1 cup sugar, plus 3 tablespoons
1 tablespoon baking powder, plus 11/2 teaspoons
3/4 teaspoon salt
9 tablespoons unsalted sweet cream butter, melted (cooled)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt chocolate in microwave, about 1 minute. Don’t overcook.
Combine egg whites, 1/4 cup milk and vanilla. In a separate bowl combine the dry ingredients and mix on low speed. Add the butter and remaining milk. Mix on low speed until dry ingredients are moistened and then increase speed to medium and beat for about 11/2 minutes.
Scrape bowl well and gradually add egg mixture in three batches, mixing about 30 seconds after each step to incorporate completely. Add the melted chocolate and beat on medium until nice and smooth.
Fill cupcake papers two-thirds full and back until lightly golden on top, about 15 to 18 minutes.
Peppermint Buttercream
• Ingredients
1 pound sweet cream butter
8 cups confectioner’s sugar
1/8 teaspoon peppermint extract
Milk
Mix butter until smooth. Add confectioner’s sugar in small batches, mixing well after each batch. I add about 1 tablespoon milk after each installment to keep the buttercream smooth. Add a good peppermint extract.
Once all confectioner’s sugar is added, mix on high speed for about 3 to 4 minutes, or until the buttercream is light and its color is bright white.
Garnish cupcakes with a peppermint stick or crushed peppermint or a peppermint leaf.
James Gray, Dozen cupcakes
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