Let them eat cake from a cup winner

CRYSTAL Ourique put down her microphone and turned to cupcakes. Now she has just won a top business award. Julie Marshall reports. Pictures by John Clifton.

FROM the outside it looks like any other modern brick-built building but step through the doors of the Cupcake Shoppe in Wakefield and you are transported back into another age. Gleaming oak furniture which has been rescued and lovingly restored, glass chandeliers and intricate plasterwork around the ceiling have been brought together to create a wonderful atmospheric backdrop to the cupcakes in a dazzling kaleidoscope of colours that adorn every surface.

The delicious smell of home baking fills your nostrils, gentle jazz music plays in the background and all is right with the world. Cupcake Shoppe owner 26-year-old Crystal Ourique launched her business just three years ago and it has been a resounding success. Two golds at last year’s Great Taste Awards and then last week winner in the Small-Medium Business category of the Wakefield District Business Awards 2011 are just the beginning. Plans are already under way to expand into other Yorkshire towns and cities and a cupcake cookbook will soon be published.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

All the cupcakes are made by hand each morning by the hand-picked team of bakers and cake decorators in the small kitchen above the shop. Their day usually starts at 6am but if a big order is on the cards, they have been known to work through the night. Crystal said: “We use free range eggs from a local farm and our flour, sugar and other ingredients are the best we can get.

“We create around 20 different combinations including strawberries and cream, lemon, chocolate and peanut butter, Baileys and cream and we are adding new flavours all the time.”

Cupcakes were, until recently, a wholly American delicacy, known to fans of the television series Sex and the City and a chosen few others. Crystal, a broadcast journalist by profession, first came across them while visiting relatives in Canada and began to create her own with the aid of a secret recipe handed down by her Portuguese great-grandmother.

Cupcake making became Crystal’s hobby and then her passion and her cakes were soon in great demand from family and friends for birthdays, weddings, christenings and other celebrations. In a brave move, Crystal decided to change career, follow her heart and set up her own business making cupcakes

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

She set up in the kitchen of her Middlestown home but soon after spotted a small newsagent’s on Wakefield Road, was available. She moved in and began making and selling sandwiches and cakes to local businesses. Word soon spread and her cupcakes were taking over more and more of her time.

Some months later, the old newsagent’s was demolished to make way for a brand new row of shops and it was 12 months before the new Cupcake Shoppe, the first of its kind in Yorkshire, was finally ready to receive its first customers.

Crystal said: “We opened up again in time for Valentine’s day 2010 and soon had a full diary of cake orders. Last summer two of our cupcakes – chocolate peanut butter and cookies ‘n’ cream were given gold awards in the Great Taste Awards. We were very busy with weddings and we undertook corporate contracts for a number of major international companies. This summer we have our biggest challenge to date, a corporate customer has ordered more than 25,000 cupcakes for delivery in July and August and we’re all very excited.”

Prices for individual cupcakes range from £1 for a mini cupcake to £35 for a giant birthday cake with various sizes in between. A typical wedding creation with individual cupcakes will cost around £200.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The shop is iclose to junction 40 of the M1 with plenty of parking so customers can pull up right outside. A delivery service is also available.

The Cupcake Shoppe, 133, Wakefield Road, Roundwood, Wakefield, tel 01924 277855 or you can visit www.thecupcakeshoppe.co.uk.

Related topics: