Recently in Cupcakes Category

Holiday shopping season is upon us once again, and with it come the magazine stories, window signs, Facebook buttons and individual resolutions carrying the "shop local," banner. It's a noble idea -- to support our local merchants, the ones who give us nice Christmas decorations and put a festive feeling in the air, as well as contribute to the local economy -- instead of doing all our shopping online.

It's certainly something that I am going to try to do as much as I can in the next month or so, but similarly, I have made resolved to "go local" when it comes to food, making the effort when I can to patronize locally-owned restaurants or food stores.

This goes hand-in-hand with another resolution to break out of my "restaurant rut," and try to dine somewhere new more often, as opposed to falling back onto the same two or three restaurants that I regularly visit.

What got me to making this resolution was the untimely demise of one restaurant and the opening of a new cafe, separated by only a few blocks in the Edgewater/Uptown neighborhood. When I noticed a pizza place/bar named Monticchio on Clark Street just north of Lawrence, next to Lincoln Towing, I was surprised that a restaurant would open in such a seemingly inhospitable location -- that stretch of Clark is most notable for the aforementioned towing pirates, a couple garages and a cemetery across the street -- and I made a mental note of the place. I walked or drove past it many times after that, thought it looked cheery and as if time and attention to deal had been paid to the interior and the menu and thought, "I'll have to go there sometime."

"Sometime" never came. Monticchio closed not long ago.

because it's about to burst, says Slate columnist Daniel Gross. In a piece last week in Slate, he compares the cupcake craze to recent rages such as real estate and dot.coms, and like those two wildly popular phenomena, the cupcake bubble, he believes, is bound to burst.

He says that the current economic recession, which got going in 2007, "laid the groundwork for the recent proliferation of cupcake stores in American cities."

Setting up a cupcakery doesn't require a large investment of capital, he explains, since costs of ingredients and labor are low for cupcake-making and, as he points out, " It takes about as much labor to produce three dozen cupcakes as it does to make one dozen."

While economic and culinary indicators would liken the prolonged popularity of cupcakes a slam dunk, Gross is not convinced this is a something that'll be around longterm. "Cupcakes are now showing every sign of going through the bubble cycle," he says.

His points include: The first wave of cupcake shops have ben joined by second and third waves, which can only differentiate themselves on how different they are from those first waves; the theory that in a depressed economy people buy affordable luxuries such as cupcakes doesn't fly with Gross, since he thinks it goes the other way -- that in times like these, people are more likely to go for the $1 donut than the $4 cupcake; cupcakes aren't that cheap for the consumer and the sugar or cuteness buzz you get last only as long as you're eating it; cupcakes are a reactionary food, something simple and understandable, compared to the complex foods many foodies rave about, but some cupcake makers are not satisfied with simple, and are going too far, essentially putting sugar atop sugar, rendering the treats too sweet.

"Cupcakes are having their moment, no question, and many could make sweet profits," Gross says. "But remember what always happens after a sugar rush: a crash."

Another cupcake shop? Really?

Indeed. This one, the tiny, three-week-old Cupcake Counter at 229 W. Madison, is a mother-daughter duo operation. Mother is the baker here; the daughter works the front of house.

As the mom, Holly Sjo, 56, tells it, the "stars aligned" for them in late 2008. Sjo and her husband had just moved back to Chicago (their hometown) from Florida to be closer to Sjo's ailing mother; their daughter, Samantha Wood, 32, did the same, giving up her gig working for the UN.

But aside from being there for Grandma, Sjo, who attended culinary school and has had some catering experience, said she and her daughter both wanted -- needed -- something more to do. When the 340-square-foot space became available, "I just popped up and said, 'I betcha we could do cupcakes,' " Sjo says.

They signed the lease in February and did their homework, checking out some of their competition around town. So how do they differ? "We are by scratch, small batches," Sjo says. "There are some people who say that's what they do, but they really don't. But if you came to my house, this is what you'd get. I bake every day."

It sounds so familiar, that tune, doesn't it?

Here's what's refreshing: They offer only four cupcake flavors daily -- carrot, butter, chocolate and red velvet -- with specials that come and go (the one pictured above is not one of theirs, but you get the idea). No basil-tomato, no bacon-lavender.

They also do cookies, brownies, macaroons and the utterly-unnecessary-but-who-cares ice cream cupcake sandwich. Intelligentsia coffee is on tap.

It's a work-in-progress, Sjo admits. Initially, they'd offered a fifth flavor, coconut, but "nobody wanted it" (people, what is wrong with you?). The butter cupcake recipe, which Sjo has to quadruple, is still "the bane of her existence," flawless one batch, flat the next.

And they hold no illusions. "In reality, in some places cupcakes are already over. Chicago was a little late to come to it. But that day will come," Sjo says.

For now, they're just hoping for more days like today. A trader (the shop is just a hop skip from the financial district) called about 3:30 p.m. to say he was buying up whatever cupcakes they had left. It was the third consecutive day he'd done so.

Oh, cupcake. We love you, even if you are, at this point, overexposed. You are our Facebook profile photo, for crying out loud.

But forgive us for stifling a yawn when first we heard about Phoebe's Cupcakes, opening tomorrow at 3327 N. Broadway.

Pastry chef and founder Phoebe Walters, 29, tells us this'll be different from other cupcake shops around. (And from those that are no longer around. Walters and partner Kate McNamara provided the recipes for Cupcakes, 613 W. Briar, which opened in 2005 and closed in December.)

"We're going for more indulgence," she says. "Higher quality. Instead of extracts, full vanilla beans. Highest quality chocolate. No shortening, preservatives, stabilizers." (Which kinda makes it sound like this place, and this place.)

Still, we like Walters' story. Small-town girl (from Plano) and her best friend from childhood, McNamara (also small-town, from Sandwich), go to culinary school, help open one cupcake shop, strike up a friendship with an investor who walks his dog in the Lakeview neighborhood and, boom -- investor agrees to fund the cupcake shop of their dreams.

Walters says they have 200 flavors up their sleeves; the shop will carry eight flavors weekly. And while their competitors charge upwards of $3.50 a cupcake, Walters' price is a sweet $2.50.