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Community Corner

Salvation in Sugar

A local cupcakery houses some powerful treats.

My wife’s casually mentioned preferences are frequently the only means of repairing the damage caused by my unintentional self-absorption. This knowledge is also handy in the event of a real-world disaster, allowing me to (temporarily, at least) gain the coveted title of “caring husband.”

Such a disaster struck on Monday. After a rough start to our day (as if any Monday start could be anything less than rough), in particular thanks to recalcitrant toddler, we headed off on our separate commutes. Mine, as usual, took eight minutes. My wife’s, generally three times that long, took an hour forty-five. A truck spilling fuel across the highway is apparently cause for shutting the whole shebang down, pinning my wife just shy of the tunnel. After I received a spat of phone calls in states of successively heightened hysteria from her, I knew I would have to delve into my (small) bag of tricks to reverse our fate, lest my family’s week devolve into a mire as immobile as the 895 traffic. But what?

The possibly declining cupcake trend has, by and large, left me unscathed. I’m not much for sweets of any type, particularly rounds of floured sugar topped by heaps of more sugar. I’ve visited “cupcakeries,” as they may be tweely called, from coast to coast, from Baltimore to Seattle, and I can’t say any had a lasting effect on me. They were cupcakes. Nothing more, and often less; the attempt to make what is, in essence, a simple thing “edgy” and “new” often blotted out what makes a cupcake good in the first place. Over-reliance on flavor-saturated buttercream frosting frequently led to poor performance on the actual cake, and what is cake if not the very foundation the sweet is built on?

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My wife is diametrically opposed to this viewpoint. She is perfectly willing to forgo adequate cake performance as long as the buttercream is piled high and thick, and to her, the cupcake trend means more opportunities for deliciousness.

, the local source for all things food, HowChow, tipped me off to a coming attraction in Elkridge. Perhaps five minutes from Harwood Park, and right by the local ,  was bringing gourmet cupcakes to Elkridge. I promptly forgot about it. Fortunately, a kind fate intervened, and HowChow pounded a reminder into my RSS feed right about the same time my wife was shifting into park on a highway. Kupcakes & Co. was open for business: salvation in the form of sugar.

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What better to end my wife’s bad day than to surprise her with a batch of freshly baked, local cupcakes? Sure, they wouldn’t do much for me, but a small sacrifice to make for a happy household. I left work early (priorities, people) and headed to our now-local cupcakery. I knew where it was, in the same shopping plaza as my beloved barbershop, but upon arrival, I spied nary a cupcake. Two empty bays in a stripmall, yes, but no handmade confections. It took about ten minutes for me to figure out that there was a back to this stripmall (unheard of!), housing my goal. Of course, my ten minutes of clueless wandering meant the store’s closing had passed me by. Still, I had to try. I reached for the door handle, held my breath, and pulled.

Open. Thank the saint of spouses. A blast of pink greeted me, along with a friendly-almost-to-the-point-of-obsequious staff.  Ten minutes and two cupcakes later, I was trundling home a half dozen assorted flavors…for two people. Subtlety is not my strong suit.

That night, after the Boss had been put to bed, we commenced a cupcake adventure. The first two victims were named Key Lime and Chocolate Raspberry, and, by the end, there were no survivors. As an avowed anti-cupcakite, I had no real expectations of actually enjoying them. They were purchased as a bulwark against spousal sadness, and nothing more. And yet. These. Were. Awesome.

The oft-neglected bottom half (Top O’ the Muffin to you!) was, in a word, perfect. Moist without being dense. A supreme crumb. Sturdy enough to handle the generous dollop of frosting but soft enough to yield to my anxious mouth. (TWSS.) Dear God, Kupcakes & Co., you’re good enough I’m willing to ignore the woeful misspelling in your name, I thought. The buttercream, in which much of the “specialized” flavor lurked, wasn’t oily or sugary; it was light (relatively speaking), not overwhelming, and an excellent partner to its more staid undercarriage.

Having been turned by the power of these cupcakes, I had to know from whence they came. I reached out to Michelle Kupiec, the owner and head baker of what, within a week, has become entrenched as a go-to Elkridge institution. (Michelle happened to let drop that 572 people showed up on June 4 for Kupcakes & Co.’s grand opening.)

If you close your eyes and try to picture the kind of person who would bake cupcakes for a living, you’ll have a pretty good idea of Michelle. Blonde, perky and relentlessly positive, Michelle could give “good attitude” lessons to the Keebler elves.

How do her cupcakes pack so much power? And is she afraid the cupcake bubble will burst? By the time a trend has spawned three seasons of a Food Network show, after all, it may be effectively over.

But Michelle doesn’t fear the fickle swings of capricious foodies. In fact, the thought of being derailed by the Next Big Thing is far from her mind. “There’s always celebration to be had,” Michelle said, and every one of her cupcakes carries a bit of joy.

“A little cupcake is a small indulgence,” she said. “You don’t feel as guilty as you would with a big piece of cake.” What’s more important, though, is that “They’re happy. They make people smile.”

You know what? They do, even for a known misanthrope like me. I originally got the cupcakes for my wife, but I’m eating one as I write this. And I’m smiling. Via some mystical amalgamation of baking prowess and healthy dollop of positive vibes, Kupcakes & Co. has suddenly become my family’s not-so-secret weapon against the dreaded Bad Day. The next time storm clouds gather over Harwood Park, I know where I’m headed.

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