Du Jour with the cupcake queens

Tidy and endlessly creative, a cupcake takes the homey elegance of a layer cake and brings it down to intimate, personal scale. The last few years have brought a nationwide explosion in cupcake shops, cookbooks and commentary, so much so you’d think we’d reached the saturation point. Not the case. Just last week, Publishers Weekly reported a new wave of cookbooks is forthcoming this spring, and Oprah Winfrey, the maven of retail influence, just sent Ellen DeGeneres 500 cupcakes in a public apology. It’s all good news for Sheetal Bueche and Rhonda Weeks, former social workers and founders of Baton Rouge’s only exclusive cupcake bakery, Sweet Wishes. The two have been trying to build a new market for their specialty baked goods since opening in November 2007.

“It’s starting to catch on,” Bueche says. “Especially now that the road work is complete.” Sweet Wishes set up shop on Perkins Road between Bluebonnet and Siegen in the midst of a major lane expansion that was at best distracting, at worse maddening. With improved store access and visibility, Bueche says business is slowing building momentum. Earlier this month, they hired pastry chef Elisha Gates, a graduate of the Louisiana Culinary Institute and former employee of Chef John Folse’s Exceptional Endings dessert division. Meanwhile, more Baton Rougeans are finding there’s reason to buy specialty cupcakes over ones that come dry and over-frosted in plastic boxes.

“You have to taste them to get the full effect,” says Bueche. She and Weeks have created 35 original flavors, which rotate in groups of eight weekly. This week’s selections include heavy duty chocolate, plain Jane, cookies and cream, smashin’ banana, pina colada, shimmy shimmy coconut, and two breakfast flavors, jalapeno and cheese and sausage and cheese. The most popular flavors are heavy duty chocolate, red velvet, chocolate chip and the yellow cake-like plain Jane.

“The other thing that’s been huge for us is the Pupcake,” says Bueche. An oats-based, small-batch treat for canines has been selling like mad among the dog set. Bueche says patrons pick them up individually or by the dozen to accommodate pet birthday parties. A true dog’s life. See sweetwishescafe.com for more information.

To read previous Du Jour features on local chefs and other culinary experts, click here.