SusieCakes: Cupcakes That Take you Back to Your Childhood
SusieCakes is a nominee for a Readers' Choice Award for Best Cupcake.
The Los Angeles, Ca.-based company was launched in 2006 by Susan Sarich. The inspiration behind the company's founding was Sarich's childhood in Chicago. Each day, she used to arrive home from school to a warm kitchen filled with the smell of baking and treats fresh from the oven. Her two grandmothers, who were also neighbors, loved to bake, from frosted sugar cookies to Whoopie pies and chocolate layer cakes.
To this day, Sarich is captivated by what those desserts symbolized. "Baked goods are hallmarks of happiness," says Sarich. "Whether we're celebrating a holiday or a specific event, we want them to be as unique as the day." It was a combination of Sarich's sweet tooth and nostalgia for the homemade desserts of her childhood that led her to open SusieCakes.
SusieCakes' cupcakes are known for their "frosting filling". Flavors include chocolate chocolate, luscious lemon, strawberry, peanut butter, fluffy coconut, and vanilla with pastel-blue vanilla frosting. The most popular cupcake is SusieCake's Southern Red Velvet, an award-winning dessert, including the "Best Traditional" category of the 2009 Nesquick Cupcake Challenge in Los Angeles. Cupcakes cost $3 each.
Other speciality items include the Whoopie Pie, seasonal fruit pies, classic chocolate brownies, lemon bars, sour cream cheesecake, and homemade pudding. SusieCakes also makes custom layer, stacked and sheet cakes, as well as its signature six-layer "Cupcake" cake. Custom orders are also accepted with advance notice.
The interior of each of SusieCakes bakeries are "retro, yet contemporary" according to Sarich. All treats are made daily on site at each location from scratch by a team of skilled artisans. Customers can watch the the activities in the kitchen through partially frosted glass windows that mimic the layers of a cake. "You smell things baking when you walk in, you see the bakers working. It's like the bakeries I grew up with."
The pastel-shaded walls of each SusieCakes also feature framed vintage Betty Crocker advertisements from the 1950's, as well as black-and-white photographs of Sarich's family's childhood birthday parties. Custom lighting fixtures, designed to evoke cake pans, hang from an antique-style, partterned tin ceiling, and the floor tiles are patterned to look like a decorated cupcake.
Each SusieCakes offers a signature menu prepared by its own head baker who works with a team of skilled bakers. The bakery only uses a few high-quality ingredients to make a wide array of desserts, following a less-is-better philosophy.
SusieCakes does not ship its baked goods, which is unfortunate for those of us not living near one of her many locations in California.
Vote for the company you believe makes the best cupcakes. Readers' Choice Winners will be announced on March 1st.
