Cupcakes, One Day at a Time...
The trials and tribulations of one girl's quest to open a cupcake shop
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Cupcakes, One Day at a Time...
We are back and bloging!
After a world wind of cupcakes, events, wine tastings, weddings, and the trials and tribulations of the first year in business we are back and bloging!
Our deepest sincere apologies to all for our brief hiatus, but we are back and have tons to fill you in on. So much has happened in the last several months and Ill do my best to recreate it for you so you don's miss out on our journey. Thanks for hanging in there with us.
Cheers & Cupcakes
Sift: a Cupcakery
Our deepest sincere apologies to all for our brief hiatus, but we are back and have tons to fill you in on. So much has happened in the last several months and Ill do my best to recreate it for you so you don's miss out on our journey. Thanks for hanging in there with us.
Cheers & Cupcakes
Sift: a Cupcakery
A Little Cupcake with your Wine...
Sniff the wine, take a sip, but don't swallow yet!!!! Roll the wine around in your mouth exposing it to all your taste buds.... swallow... and take a massive bite out of our Pink Champagne Cupcake, It's amazing....
Yes... Sift: a Cupcakery, the original wine country cupcake shop is making waves in the world of wine. Since our grand opening in April of 08' Sift has had the pleasure of pairing our cupcakes at several wine events throughout Sonoma, Napa , and Mendocino Counties. We made headlines when Dogwood Cellars invited us to pair up with them at the ZAP Zinfandel Festival at Fort Mason in San Francisco. For those of you who may not be familiar with ZAP...
"If you are a devoted foodie with a passion for Zinfandel, make plans to indulge your “inner epicurean” and spend the evening at Good Eats & Zinfandel Pairing! Noteworthy restaurants and award-winning wineries turn the art of cooking and wine pairing into an entertaining and approachable affair. Talented chefs present the ultimate combinations of distinctive tastes, while winery proprietors offer stunning Zinfandels to match." courtesy of www.zinfandel.org<:od>
We were a hit... we paired our Pink Champagne and our Snickerdoodle with Dogwood Cellar's 05 & 06 Zinfandels. Our table was flooded with wine enthusiasts amazed at perfect pair we created. We could hardly keep up with the wine chat, and the samples we were handing out... It didn't help that a mysterious wino kept sneaking up and grabbing whole cupcakes from our display tier and walking away with them.... like we didn't notice.... comon! I guess it's better taken as a complement.
Shortly after the opening of the event our both became the attraction of the evening... A big shout out to our friends over at "Catch" located in the Castro. They not only fed us with their to die for menu all night, but they sent people over to our pairing in the masses. The cupcakes were dwindling and we began to panic as the 800 cupcakes we brought were about to be obliterated and we still had 2 hours left of the show. Thinking quick on our feet, we began cutting them in half and serving them in cupcake wrappers which saved the evening.
To say the least our cupcakes were the topic of conversation of the night... and huge milestone for cupcakes and wine. Highlights of the evening were of course the amazing Zin's we had the pleasure of tasting, Hacking it with Hackett of Dogwood Cellars, and last but definitely not least.... The wine glass holder necklace! I gotta know who invented that...
Cupcake Liners and Big Timers
Yay! Today we had our first 3 inches in the Press Democrat! 3 inches all to ourselves...telling the world (or at least Sonoma Co) that we're here!!
Sift: a Cupcakery exists!...this means that these 15-hour, 6 days a week is a reality and I haven't been dreaming...
Thanks to all of you curious cupcake lovers who came in today to see if the news was true. We hope you enjoyed your delicious treat.
In other fascinating news...
We are almost through our first box of cupcake liners! So what, you say? How about the fact that there is 10,000 cupcake liners in a box!!! After 3 weeks of open time, plenty of practice behind the wheel of the mixer and apparently thousands of cupcakes we are close to splitting open the 2nd box!!! Ok, so who's counting the few dozen that we accidentally over-cooked and threw away (yes, even professionals make mistakes)??
Cheers & Cupcakes
www.siftcupcakery.com
Cupcake Fans
Wow...so I know people want to know how things have been going! I've been such a bad blogger the last couple of weeks!
So now that it's 10:48pm, I have 10 mins before I must close my eyes...I'll give a small update!
We opened officially on Tuesday and I haven't really advertised that we're open this week so that we would have a slower week and have time to work out all of the kinks before the "real" grand opening on Saturday. Well, Tuesday was a full success! We sold out 2 times in one day! I have always said that it's better to have more cupcakes than not enough...so I baked accordingly for the opening. According to all of you cupcake fans...it just wasn't enough!! I had to go back to baking mass quantities at noon! We were going crazy!
There were 4 of us working that day and we were running around trying to refill cupcake stands and trying to pack the boxes full of cupcakes. We had no idea what to expect, and even though it was a little stressful selling out mid-day...it felt really good. Jen, Corey, and my new hire Kristina-the-rock-star did an amazing job keeping it all together for me.
Yesterday the cash register went out at noon and we had to manually add transactions on an old calculator and use a cash box! ha! And good news folks, we finally have our credit card terminal up and running! Charge away...
So many cupcake fans came in and said that they had been reading this blog!! Really?? I was shocked! So thanks to you, cupcake fans...we're a hit!
My Only Entry
My only entry in days...and I know I'm getting extremely boring over here...
I'm sorry, I now wake up at 4:45 am. I get home at 11:30pm.
I understand that some of you are morning people. I don't fall in that catagory, or even a mile from it. This is a stretch...like bubble gum pulled from your teeth to your fingers stretch.
I like the snooze button...and waking up after the sun has rose.
It's a GO!
I'm dragging friends...it's now 12:19am and I've been going non-stop for days on end! There is so much to take care of I feel like my head my spin off my neck! I finally got home at 8:45pm and I was supposed to make another batch of chocolate cupcakes (tweaking my recipe a tad)...and I ran out of sugar!! Grrr...if only I had the 50lb bag of C&H that is sitting at the shop just waiting to be baked into some cupcakes!
So then I decided to send out the very first Sift Newsletter! That took a while...but look out for it in your mailboxes if you're signed up to receive it!
And then I was supposed to sew curtains for the shop windows (Suzy homemaker over here!) but I'm pooped! That will have to wait until tomorrow! Oh wait, I have 6 interviews, a lesson on the espresso machine and making the key lime pie filling for the key lime cupcakes! How many hours are in one day!?
Signing off...zzzzzzz
Oh wait! The reason that I wrote this entry (and almost forgot) is that we had our first health inspection yesterday...and we passed!!! We are good to open, nothings stopping us now! April 15th the doors will open folks!
The Future's Lookin' Bright!
Woo-hoo! The counters are in! My floors are done! And the painting has begun! And everything is so BRIGHT! I know I picked bright colors...but seeing them all come together is pretty cool...and bright (did I say that already?).
My floors look amazing! They are concrete floors in a beautiful milk chocolate color with pink and green circles. It looks pretty amazing...I must say!
And the paint started today...they put on two coats of a really beautiful pink called early sunrise (must be an insight to my future).
My counters are soo cool! They are a really pretty shade of GREEN...or more like an aqua. And it has ridges in it just like a cupcake liner! (Did the green scare you?)
Oh my gosh...this means we are getting SO CLOSE to opening!! I can not wait!!!
I would post a picture...but you'll just have to come in and see it!! (Maybe I'll give in and show you next entry!)
Where's My Guinness?
So I forgot to write about this St. Patty's story while I was on hiatus...but it's humorous, so I'll tell you my story.
I had decided to make a cupcake for St. Patty's Day. And the cupcake I decided on is a standard drink that "happens" to me every year. And I say "happens" because I never plan on taking an Irish Car Bomb (really, who would), but it just "happens" on a crazy night out...or say, St. Patty's Day.
So yes, I made an Irish Car Bomb Cupcake! Chocolatey, Guinness cake with Baileys Irish Cream frosting...and a green M&M on top. It was screamin'! I made about 100 of these for the Ladies Night Out event at Garage Boutique (shout out to my BFF...check out her rockstar blog up there in my links on the left), and they were all gone. gone daddy, gone. So this was on Thursday before St. Patty's day...
I came back to the shop on Saturday to do some more baking (this one was for a friends birthday in the city) of this profound, new Bomb Cupcake. And I'm a little hungover from the Friday night before (St. Patty's day lasts the whole weekend), I get to the shop, start collecting all of my ingredients and I can't find the 6-pack of Guinness I bought on Thursday! Ok, it was only a 4-pack after baking...but I KNOW I didn't use it all! So I'm searching high and low. Nothing. I call my BFF and then mom and state that someone has broken into the shop. I can't believe it! They broke in to my shop and stole my Guinness! Ok, I don't know why they didn't take all of the really expensive stuff...but that's the only logical explanation!
Then I remember that my mom stopped by while I was baking for the Ladies Night...I vaguely remember her telling me that she needs more iron in her diet...Guinness has a lot of iron, right? hmmm.... Well, I called her back and she almost hung up on me for accusing her of taking my Guinness ("Andrea, why wouldn't I have said something when you called me about the missing Guinness the first time!?!")...so I guess she's out as a suspect.
Never fear, I picked up some more Guinness at the store around the corner and finished my baking. Then I went home to get dolled up for a night in SF...and guess what I found in MY fridge at home...yup, the MIA Guinness. I must have brought it home for the Friday night party and forgot about it. I think all this baking is getting to my head.
Oh well, Black and Tan anyone?
Shopping for me...or for you?
So sorry I haven't been blogging in a few days...but I've been busy! jeez...I'm opening a cupcake shop people!
So yesterday I went down and applied for my sellers permit! This is exciting because that means I get to SHOP! (yeah right, not for me...I have no money as a business owner!) I get to buy things for the shop that I want to sell...there are sooo many cute things...I have to reign myself in. I'm really excited about the chandeliers that are going over the bar (I'll be selling these chandeliers as well)...I just haven't decided on what color to order, pink or white?
Then I'll have the cutest aprons ever! They are flipping adorable from Heavenly Hostess! Check her out:www.heavenlyhostess.com
I'm ordering the halter styles in brown/pink and brown/aqua...and maybe some pink/green.
Then I'll have cupcake holders that I'm making into custom cupcake holders...yes, making! With all my spare time...hmmm.
Oooh, I'm so excited to shop for cute things! And sell cute things!!
[Maybe This One Should Be Titled] Color Me Bad...
Today I met with the countertop guy and the guy that's doing the paint. It seems so exciting because once these things are done...we'll be one step away from opening! So I met with both guys and they were really great, pointing things out that I hadn't entirely thought out and reasoning with my visions of grandeur...ie.,helping keep my champagne standards within my beer budget.
So I was handed these books of the color choices I had to choose from. All the colors you can imagine and more than you would ever want to look at.
I digress for a moment. A few weeks ago when we were trying to decide on names, my Dad pointed out to me that I needed to get better and quicker with my decision making abilities, that I needed to believe in my own decisions and just go with them. Since I happen to be one of those people who wait until the waiter has taken the order from all 15 other people at my table, I happen to agree, I'd like to be one of those "quick decision makers". So there it is, I've made the decision to make decisions.
So after that, I easily chose my colors for the walls and a really fun green countertop! We all left happy and the work should start next week.
But then the counter guy called and said the counter I picked was out of stock. So he gave me back the color wheel to decide upon another counter color. And after thinking a little bit more about it, I decided that maybe the paint I chose was too bright for the walls.