Crazy For Cupcakes

How much would you pay for a cupcake? At Baltimore Cupcake Company, it could run you as much as 12 bucks a treat, but owner Tracy Rice is having no problem finding takers: Her growing clientele is forking over as much as $2,500 an event for cupcakes sparkling with Swarovski crystals, monogrammed with chocolate letters, or topped with handmade whimsical parasols. (The basic model goes for $2.50.)
Since debuting in Baltimore three years ago, Rice has expanded into Montgomery County, opening up shop in Olney in January. Now, the 40-something baker—a former Capitol Hill staffer who quit after the 2001 anthrax mail attacks on the nation's capital—is looking at locations in Annapolis. "There are a lot of people out there who want really, really elaborate stuff, and they're spending the money to do it,'' says Rice.
Take the Tiki cupcake tree. Rice says she and her five full-time employees sometimes start in the wee hours of the morning—first baking the cupcakes, adorning them with edible flip-flops and leis, then arranging the goodies on grass-skirted tiers—and work through the night. "Those leis. . . ,'' she says. "It can take a couple of hours to make each lei. And we have to do pretty much everything the day of the event, so it'll be fresh.'' Once, Rice and two staffers logged 18 hours building the stands and making the adornments for a nine-tier "cupcake cake.'' That set the client back about $1,200. "Attention to detail,'' Rice says, "is our big thing.''
And the flavors? No plain ol' vanilla and chocolate here. There's Island Citrus, Noix de Coco, Pumpkin Amaretto, Chocolate Framboise, and the most popular, Vanilla Woo, an old recipe she borrowed from a friend's grandma in Kentucky.
She won't divulge revenues, but claims the company turned a profit midway into its second year. Between both stores, it's not unusual for 2,000 cupcakes to be snapped up on a Saturday.
"They're going all out,'' she says of her customers. "Cupcakes have just taken off in the past five years.''