'Cupcakes' bring fresh indulgence to Mexico

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News
Embassy Row - June 2009
(I took the picture too!)

When Tom Grant first moved to Mexico City from Calgary, Canada nearly 10 years ago, he noticed a certain sweet treat was missing from local bakeries: cupcakes.

Tired of eating stale pastries and inspired by similar New York City shops like Billy's Bakery and Magnolia, Grant opened his Cupcakes by Tom café in 2007 to serve Mexico fresh batches of the handheld dessert - and he's gearing up to open a second shop soon.

"One of the reasons that I was inspired to start Cupcakes by Tom was that I was tired of going to the larger coffeehouses and buying their pastries that looked so delicious, only to discover that they weren't really fresh," he wrote in an e-mail while on a trip home to Calgary.

"I felt like there would be a market for incredibly fresh products; I would say that's our number one selling feature," he said.

Business was admittedly slow in the first few months at the Colonia Condesa café, he said. Cupcakes in Mexican homes have long been overshadowed by more traditional sweets like the airy "concha" or the flaky "cuerno," or croissant.

But the demand for cupcakes has steadily increased - so much so that Grant says he's scouting locations for a second bakery.

"It took a lot of educating on our part to explain to our Mexican clientele that a cupcake is like a piece of cake that you can eat with your fingers," he said.

"When we opened, our clients were primarily ex-pats and Mexicans who had traveled extensively and were familiar with the product," he said. "Now, thanks to word of mouth, we have a very mixed clientele: moms buying cupcakes for their children's birthday, a co-worker taking fresh muffins to the office on Fridays, people taking a dessert to a Saturday family get-together."

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, two teenage girls bounded into the shop squealing, "Cupcakes! Cupcakes!" as they pored over the menu, although Sayana Guerrero, head pastry chef, said that the girls were a bit more sprightly than the usual fifty to sixty customers who come to Cupcakes each day.

Guerrero said she pops out a couple hundred cupcakes and a hundred or so muffins for two hours each morning at the Condesa "cupcakery."

Cake batters include mixes like vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, carrot, blueberry and red velvet. Creamy layers of frosting include flavors like lemon, cream cheese, vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Cupcakes cost between 15 and 17 pesos each.

Giant, fluffy muffins sell for 10 pesos each and come in blueberry, bran with raisins, carrot with raisins, strawberry and chocolate chip.

Guerrero said that while various other pastry shops in Mexico City also offer the compact treats, Cupcakes is one of the few places that sticks to the traditional cupcake style popularized by U.S. bakeries - fluffy frosting made from a sugar and butter base covering a petite, rounded cake.

Grant's personal favorite is a sugary rendition nicknamed "Tommy's," a rich chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting topped with gooey caramel sauce.

The café complements its desserts with freshly brewed coffee, the grounds a mix of beans from Chiapas and Veracruz and blended together by the city's own Café Etrusca. Hot tea comes in a variety of Stash-brand flavors.

Grant said that along with cupcakes' freshness, one of the café's top selling points is the bakers' ability to work closely with customers to fulfill special orders. One customer, for example, comes in every day for her special batch of raisin-less bran muffins.

FROM CALGARY TO `CUPCAKES'

Despite the steady success of Cupcakes by Tom, Grant says his initial intentions didn't include cupcake-filled dreams.

An employee at the time with WestJet Airlines in Calgary, the cupcake connoisseur in 2000 came down to visit Mexico City with a Mexican friend of his. Grant's original plan was to stay two years and move back home, but then the "entrepreneurial bug" bit, he said.

First, he opened a school for teaching English, Grant Languages (www.grant.com.mx), and soon followed the visions of swirled frosting, colorful sprinkles and moist, tasty cake.

Grant said that while the bakery is moving steadily along, there are still a few things he would change about the shop.

He said initially chose the cupcake café's spot on Chilpancingo Street because he lives just a minute's walk away. In retrospect, he says he should have filled a vacancy closer to Parque México or the restaurant-packed Michoacán Street.

"We are less accessible to drive-up traffic," he wrote in the e-mail. "We're currently scouting out a second location in Condesa where customers will be able to drive up, park their cars easily and come on in to purchase their product."

He said another challenge was gauging how many cupcakes and muffins to bake each day to avoid shortages or surpluses of the freshly made treats.

But even amidst the usual ups and downs of running a small-scale business, Grant has successfully succeeded in making the somewhat unfamiliar cupcake a must-have sugar fix in Mexico City.