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The Northern Illinoisan

Section C1

Sunday, November 25, 2014

15

The Northern Illinoisan

Sweet Shoppe

Welcome to Smallcakes
By ERIC SCHELKOPF

ST. CHARLES Those with a

sweet tooth will find a variety of
tempting treats at Smallcakes: A
Cupcakery of St. Charles, which
recently opened at 117 W. Main
St., Suite 120, in downtown St.
Charles.
Hinckley resident Tina
Wackerlin and her husband,
Eric, opened the franchise business on Sept. 12.
Ive always loved to bake,
Tina Wackerlin said. If I had
a choice of cooking a sevencourse meal and seven different
desserts, Id pick the desserts.
The St. Charles store is the
second Smallcakes to open in
Illinois. Jill Wackerlin-Watson,
a cousin of Tina Wackerlins
husband, opened a Smallcakes
store in March at 115 E. Ogden
Ave. in Naperville.
The cupcakes are made fresh
daily. Smallcakes offers 15 signature flavors, along with two
different daily special flavors.

Cupcake lovers also might

notice something different
about the cupcakes at Smallcakes.
Theyre a larger cupcake
than the normal-sized cupcake, she said.

They bring you

back to your
childhood,
Whittaker said.
They also bring
people together.
To fill the demand, Wackerlin and her other employees
start baking at 5 or 6 a.m. and
continue through early evening.
The two most popular cupcakes
at the store are the caramel
crunch cupcake chocolate
cake with caramel frosting,
topped with sea salt and pret-

By: Shannon Antinori

BLOOMSBURY

Traveling Cupcake:
Dubais Gold Infusion
By: Sarah Lynch

In a city where excess is the

norm, its not surprising to
find an unassuming bakery and
cafe that sells the worlds most
expensive cupcake.
Its a gold-infused cupcakeapart from having the flour,
the butter, the chocolate, the
vanilla beans, said Inaayah
Abdul Aziz, the media and
marketing manager for Tablez,
the parent of the Bloomsburys
cafe. And it has an edible gold
sheet, Abdul Aziz added.
When Dubai wants to make
a statement, it doesnt hold
back. Take the Golden Phoenix
cupcake: a fist-sized delight
made with Italian cocoa,
Ugandan vanilla beans and
23-carat gold. Fifteen have sold
since they hit the market here
two years ago. Now, all five
Bloomsburys cafes in the UAE
sell them.

Joliet City Council members

had a treat in store for home
bakers Tuesday, voting to
approve a so-called Cupcake
Law.
The state law was established
in honor of a Troy, Illinois,
sixth-grader whose cupcake
business was shut down by
local officials because her
parents kitchen had not been
inspected and she did not have
the required permits to operate

SANDY BRESSNER

Birthday cake cupcakes at Smallcakes in St. Charles.

Joliet City Council OKs Cupcake Law

Home bakers allowed to
sell goods for profit.

The Worlds most expensive cupcake

zels and the wedding cake

cupcake, Wackerlin said.
The store is trying to take
advantage of the nightlife in
downtown St. Charles by staying open later. Smallcakes is
open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Mondays through Thursdays,
10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and
Saturdays and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Sundays.
There is a lot of foot traffic
in this area and a lot of restaurants behind us, Wackerlin
said. People stop in after they
go to dinner, or to a sporting
event. I feel if we werent open
that late, that wed be missing
out on a lot of opportunities.
Whittaker believes cupcakes
remain popular becuse of their
nostalgia factor.
They bring you back to
your childhood, Whittaker
said. They also bring people
together. People try each others
cupcakes all the time.

a bakery.
Joliet City Attorney Jeff
Plyman said the health
department opted to sue the
downstate girl, whose baked
goods helped raise funds for
her church. The state law was
crafted to permit the sale of
homemade goods and protect
the bakers.
Council members voted
unanimously in favor of
establishing a local Cupcake
Law, with councilwoman Jan
Quillman speaking out against
critics.
Come on, people, get a life,
Quillman said, addressing those

BILL RUMINSKI

who objected to the law. If you

dont want to eat homemade
goods, dont buy it. Potica?
Cupcakes? I vote aye.
Councilman Larry Hug said
he was voting yes thanks to his
late grandmother, who made
kolaczki and sold them for their
church, school and Cub Scouts.
I dont want to make her roll
over in her grave, so I vote aye,
Hug said.
Councilman Jim McFarland, who spearheaded efforts
to bring the Cupcake Law to
Joliet, was recognized by the
Cunningham Neighborhood
Council. A grateful home baker

also brought in potica for city

council to enjoy once the measure passed.
Under the law, a home baker
must prepare the food items in
his or her personal residence
with sales made only by the
operator or a religious/charitable organization, and gross
sales may not exceed $1,000 per
month. The Will County Health
Department will also have the
right to inspect a home kitchen
operation in the event of a
complaint or disease outbreak,
according to the city.

By Jessica Wohl

than just focusing on cupcakes

as the chain had since it opened
in 2003.
Along with its well-known
cupcakes, the chain is now
selling items such as the
Crumbnut, a cross between a
doughnut and a croissant, and
a Baissant, which it said is a
combination of a bagel and a
croissant.
The new owners previously
said they planned to reopen
about two dozen stores of the

Crumbs Grand Reopening

Crumbs Bake Shop reopened
its location in Water Tower
Place on Thursday, ending a
three-month absence of the
colossal cupcakes in Chicago.
In July, Crumbs was delisted
from the Nasdaq and soon after
closed its remaining locations.
Marcus Lemonis and Fischer
Enterprises stepped in to buy
the chain and said they would
reinvent Crumbs as more of a
sweets and snacks shop, rather

Cops: One
Sweet
Assault
By Dan Hinkel
In the heat of a domestic dispute, a Chicago woman pelted
her husband with cupcakes
before police arrived to arrest
her Saturday night.
The fight started with a
verbal quarrel about 7:45 p.m.
at the home in the 4700 block
of South Western Avenue,
according to a police report,
but escalated until the woman
started hitting her husband
over the head.
After that, she reached for
the box of desserts and directed
a fusillade of snack cakes at his
head and body, her husband
told police. Several of the
confections apparently hit their
mark, as the man's head and
shirt were smudged with icing
when officers arrived, according
to a police report.
He told officers he feared for
his safety, and she was verbally
aggressive with officers, the
report states.
Police said she admitted
hurling the treats at her husband.
On Sunday morning, Cook
County Circuit Judge Adam
D. Bourgeois Jr. charged the
woman with a misdemeanor.

What Should You Bake Next?

Dorie Greenspan

J.M HIRSCH

By J.M. HIRSCH - AP Food

Editor
The annoying thing about
Dorie Greenspan is that no
matter how much you don't like
to bake, aren't good at baking,
don't even want to bake... If you
listen to her long enough, you'll
find yourself hankering to get
your hands into some flour,
certain even you can whip up
some laborious, glorious baked
treat. Her can-do attitude is
that infectious.
It's OK to hate her just a little
bit for it.
Luckily, Greenspan's latest
cookbook, "Baking Chez Moi"
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
2014), has little tolerance for

Sprinkle cupcakes from Crumbs Bake Shop

time- or skill-intensive baking.

The idea for it came from the
realization that even in France
the country from which
much of her culinary inspiration is drawn home cooks
lack the time, tolerance and
skill for anything but simple
home baking.
"Real French people don't
bake! At least they don't bake
anything complicated, finicky,
tricky or unreliable," she writes
in the book. "Pastry, the fancy
stuff, is what pastry shops are
for, and France has plenty of
them."
We spoke with Greenspan
recently and asked her what
desserts Americans are too
intimidated to make at home,
but really should. The lesson,
of course, is that the more you
bake, the better you bake. She
suggests picking a handful of
easy items to master.
"It's really great to have
these basic building blocks
that you feel really good about
and confident about. And then
you can play with what you're
making. Then the pleasure of
baking is doubled," she said in
a telephone interview. "It's not
really just tackling something
you're afraid of. It's building
your toolbox so that you're free
to create things on your own."
Where to start? Her suggestions (condensed and edited for

clarity):
Granola Cake
"I created this cake to do
something fun and unusual
with the granola I was making for friends, and now I just
keep making it, whether I have
homemade granola or not,"
Dorie Greenspan writes in her
new cookbook, "Baking Chez
Moi" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014). "I think of this as a
snack cake and nibble it out of
hand, but that's so not French.
When I serve it in Paris, I cut
it into 2-inch squares, put
them on plates, top with ice
cream and serve with forks and
spoons."
Recipe: Start to finish: 1 hour
(20 minutes active)
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted
butter, room temperature, plus
extra for the pan
1 cup (136 grams) all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon (if granola is not spiced)
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg (if granola is not spiced)

1 cup (120 grams) granola,

preferably homemade

4 ounces (113 grams) bittersweet, milk or white chocolate,

finely chopped
1/2 cup (60 grams) shredded
coconut, sweetened or unsweetened
1/2 cup (100 grams) packed
light brown sugar
1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated sugar
1 large egg, room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
extract

Turn to City Lights, Page 18

ment, or in a large bowl with a

hand mixer, beat the 1/2 cup of
butter at low-medium speed for
2 to 3 minutes, or until soft and
creamy. Add both sugars and
beat for 2 minutes. Add the egg
and beat until the mixture is
smooth, about 2 minutes more.
Beat in the vanilla and salt.
Reduce the speed to low and
add the flour mixture, mixing
only until it disappears into
the batter. Add the granola
mixture, again mixing just until
incorporated. Scrape the batter,
which will be very thick, into
the prepared pan. Smooth the
top of the batter to make sure it
gets into the corners.

Bake the cake for 35 to

40 minutes, or until the top
is honey brown and sugarcrackly; a skewer inserted at the
center should come out clean.
Transfer the pan to a rack and
let rest for 10 minutes, then run
a knife around the edges of the
cake and unmold it onto the
rack; invert and cool to room
temperature on the rack.
The cake is very moist and
will keep, wrapped in plastic,
at room temperature for about
4 days. You also can wrap it
airtight and freeze it for up to 2
months; defrost it still wrapped.

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

Set a rack on the ovens
middle shelf, then heat the oven
to 325 F. Coat an 8-inch square
baking pan with butter, then
line it with kitchen parchment
or waxed paper.
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder,
baking soda and cinnamon and
nutmeg, if using. In another
bowl, toss together the granola,
chocolate and coconut.
Working in a stand mixer
fitted with the paddle attach-

Granola Cake

J.M. HIRSCH