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From local leaders and hometown heroes to breaking stories and in-depth conversations, the KMAS Podcast brings you the voices that matter in Mason County, Washington. Hosted by longtime broadcaster Jeff Slakey, each episode dives into what’s happening around the Hood Canal—government, education, small business, the outdoors, and everything in between.
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Well, folks, I have got a great conversation for us today, and it's with Cally, the cuppiecakes queen. How are you? I'm good. How about you? I'm great.
And we are here on the edge of your second anniversary. Tell me a little bit about where we where we are right now. And then we'll get into the whole journey.
OK, well, we're here at my bakery. Like you said, going on two years. It's an amazing thing to think about because so many folks have used your cupcakes and cakes, and you can see you online, cuppycakesqueen.com. I was just recently at some event.
It was with the hospital, and you had donated some of your cupcakes for the auction there. Kind of started from home, baking for friends and family. You know, classic story, baking for friends and family.
And then eventually the farmer's market and then opening up our storefront. Do you have any culinary background or was it just in the kitchen at home saying, well, let's try this? Yeah, I actually don't tell anybody, but I grew up in Los Angeles and I went to culinary school there at Los Angeles Trade Tech. What are some of the flavors that you've created over the many years that you weren't sure if it would turn out? And then you're like, this is really there's something here.
Oh, goodness. I would say, gosh, there's so many. I think a lot of the time it comes from other people saying, I'd like to try this.
And then I'm like, I don't know if this will work out. Like what? What's an example of that? So we have one that's called Tropical Escape, and it's a banana and pineapple cake with a coconut. Sorry, a coconut cake with a banana and pineapple filling.
And I first was like, I don't know if this is going to work, but it actually is really, really delicious. And then another one I would say is our coconut lemon curd is one that I wasn't too sure about, but it's actually one of our most popular flavors. You mentioned on your website that you're not like other store bought desserts.
What's the main difference? Love. Butter. I don't know.
Just real ingredients. We you know, there's no preservatives. We make everything from scratch here.
The fillings, the frostings. Where how long does it take to do one of these cakes? So I'm looking behind you here and I see it's kind of an underwater cake. And there's a middle part that you could say kind of is like a geode type of a thing there.
How long does something like that take? Well, that is the thing in the middle is like it's called a fault line cake. That one. Oh, goodness.
It's hard to it's hard to tell, you know, from from from beginning to end, from the baking at all, depending on the filling and then the actual decoration. I would say that it probably takes if I'm really in a good space, it probably takes at least eight hours when you consider the fondant that goes into it. And I'm probably doing it on the shorter end.
But the fondant that goes into it, the decorations, the coloring of the buttercream, all that takes a really long time, which I think sometimes people don't understand the steps that you have to take in order to make, you know, custom cake. Cakes and cupcakes are different than a lot of what you have sold here locally in the past. You mentioned the farmers market.
So what did people know you for there? Definitely scones were a big thing, which started from a customer saying, hey, you should make scones. And I'm like, OK. And so I would say I probably got started with cookies.
And I was doing cake slices at one point until the weather told me different. But yeah, scones, cookies, coffee, cakes, things like that are we're good at the farmers market. People in the community last year nominated you as rookie of the year.
What does that mean to kind of get that recognition from folks? It means a lot. It it really kind of solidified that I'm meant to be here. I'm meant to be doing this.
The community has been so welcoming from the first farmers market. I actually the first I guess when I was doing my waffles for the timber days from that first event all the way till now, like the community has been behind me. They've seen me in the ups and my downs because it's not it's not easy starting your own business, especially in a smaller town.
The community has always been there for me. So that was really like such a blessing to to be nominated, to even be thought of at all. Knowing the community, being in the community for the last five years.
Is there something that, you know, the majority of the folks are like, this is this is like a Shelton taste, a Shelton flavor. Yeah, I definitely think our own milk and pies are probably like what we're most known for around here. You know, I wish I can say our cupcakes, although people say they are some of the best cookies they've ever had.
But I would say people really are really drawn to our cookies. They really they really love like, again, the pecan chocolate chunk is if we don't have it, people are so upset with us. So it's definitely I would say that that's, you know, we're known for that.
And I will say a lot of people will say, hey, she's the lady to go to for for cakes or she's ready to go to for cupcakes. So what would be what's like the large what are some some large groups that you're like, well, I can accommodate this many cupcakes for an event? Oh, goodness. That's a good question.
So most recently, I would say we had a wedding and I think it was like 150, 160 cupcakes. But at one point I was doing 500 cupcakes for the Home Depot. So I'm pretty sure we could we could have the capacities to to definitely expand if anybody, you know, Sierra Pacific, anybody wants to reach out.
And these large, large companies in town want something for you. What are some of the other like options that people can come in and buy from you? So single cookies, you were saying, single are single cupcakes available. Yeah.
In the in the display. Yeah. So when we're open Tuesday through Friday, we do offer, of course, our cupcakes.
We always have at least five flavors, but sometimes we go as high as like eight. But we always have cupcakes. We always have cookies.
We have brownies. Our brownies are another thing that people will come here specifically for. We do a caramel turtle brownie that people really like.
We do cheesecakes. We do lemon bars. We also have cinnamon rolls on Thursdays and we have scones on Fridays.
And we have people that specifically come for cinnamon rolls or specifically come for scones. How is a cupcake different than a regular cake? Hmm. Well, my cupcakes specifically are two different recipes.
So I have a cake recipe and I have a cupcake recipe. Some people will use their cupcake and cake recipe as the same. And I'll just, you know, bake it in different pans.
For me, a good cupcake is a nice, soft, moist cupcake. And they're not always the sturdiest, whereas my cake, I want it to be a little bit more sturdy. Oh, OK.
Yeah. So my cakes and my cupcakes are different. Like my my cupcakes have sour cream in them.
My cakes do not. They just have a lot of butter and a lot of, you know, milk depending on the recipe and things like that. How does it feel when you're scrolling through old social media, maybe on that classic Shelton Talks, and you see someone gushing about what you've created for them? Oh, that's it's amazing.
I love seeing it. I it's so nice. Or even when people are like, oh, recommend a place and they, you know, they always you'll see like five people recommending, you know, the Cupcake Queen.
And it's so. It kind of humbles me in a way, you know, because it's like. Nobody sees all all the trials that I had to go through, all the errors that I had to go to to get to this point where people are actually like, you know, you're the best bakery, blah, blah, blah, you know, like saying all that stuff.
So it's always so nice to see. Happy anniversary. And make sure you come by here.
What are the plans for this? This will air on the radio before Friday. So what are the plans for Friday? Friday? We're going to be opening up at 12 that day. We're going to be here 12 to six celebrating.
We're going to have all all of your favorite things. We're going to have the Dubai brownies. We're going to have cake jars.
We're going to have a bunch of different flavors of cupcakes and brownies. And we're going to do it a little bit more a smaller size so people can grab more than one thing if they want to. And of course, we're going to have, you know, decorations up celebrating the two year.
We're going to be giving away our signature cake, some cupcakes, things like that. 2523 Olympic Highway North is the official address here. 360-490-0074.
Cally, it was good to talk with you as well.