I recently met with a woman whose dream is to quit her corporate job, go to pastry school, and start a bakery - because she LOVES to bake.

She asked me what it was like to run a cupcake bakery on a high-volume day like Valentine’s Day. “It’s CRAZY,” is what I told her. And then I started rattling off a list of everything that goes on:

We get our ingredients scaled.
We get our batters made.
We let our batters rest.
We get our buttercreams beaten.
We get our foils separated.
We set up our sheet pans and heat up our ovens.
We scoop batter into the foils.
We bake cupcakes.
We make fillings (caramel, ganache, pecan, etc.) from scratch.
We carve out cupcakes to make room for filling.
We fill pastry bags.
We pipe cupcakes.
We label them with Quippies.
We give the cupcakes time to set.
We fold boxes.
We fold inserts.
We call to follow up with all inbound orders.
We print out orders.
We hand write all of your gift notes.
We fold more boxes.
We get more flour.
We get more butter.
We laugh a lot.
We fight over whose music is best.
We wrap up your box.
We assign delivery drivers.
We confirm deliveries with our drivers.
We deliver your cupcakes.
We follow up with you.

All this over a 24 hour period leading up to the 14th of February.

And then we sleep for a bit, then get up and do it all over again for the orders the following day.

We love Valentine’s Day. Thank you for making it a true labor of love for us, and for giving us the chance to deliver shiny happy goodness to your loved ones. And thanks for continuing to order throughout the year! You give us a reason to do the entire list over and over, and we love it.

At our One Year Anniversary at theWit we decided to throw a costume contest out of foil. The winner gets a dozen free cupcakes every month for the next year.

Thanks to all who participated. There are some crazy costumes, and we have our favorites, but we’ll leave it up to you, the wonderful social media community, to vote for the best Foiled costume.

Please vote for your favorite costume (submit a comment with the corresponding letter) and that person will receive a dozen free cupcakes from us for the next year, starting next month.

We’ll keep the voting through 08/26/10 until 12 noon, central time.

A - @CristerDelacruz

B - @allieo

C - @stevomcclellan

D - Dave

E - @BPMmallow

and the little cupcake on top…

F - @sarahtoxic

G - @PaulinaMys & @MKinChiTown

H - @misspamelav

I - @cratediggahash

J - @kellyvonebers & @lamareo

and the little detail on top…

‘Shiny, Happy, Birthday’

K - Angela

L - @luvlylaos

M - @y_mosa

N - Alan

O - @leahchristine

P - @alvinthethird

Q - @kassiemclaugh

R - @HGisMe & date

The fine print resides here.

Get voting!

I remember my very first tweet to college friend Xander:

And I remember having dinner with my good friend Amy, who said to me, “You know what? It might be a good idea to see what this whole social media thing is about.”

Well, Xander and Amy, we owe you. Because without you, we never would have found such a fantastic, vibrant community like the Chicago social media one.

And now we’re celebrating a YEAR (!) of interacting with you all at one of the coolest new lounge spots in all of Chicago, and we’d love to throw a big party with lots of free cupcakes and foil and have you all come.

So will you please come celebrate with us? We promise we’ll bring the cupcakes if you bring your pretty faces. And guess what? Be one of the first 100 to register, and we’ll even have a little gift waiting just for you.

Details and registration here.

See you next Wednesday, lovelies!

-Mari

Your man could be our first ever mancake.

The Details:

Here’s what you win:

• A cupcake named after your man to appear on our permanent menu

• A feature on our home page and our blog

• 2 dozen of our favorite cupcakes

How to enter:

Tweet us @FoiledCupcakes using the #mancake hashtag. Tell us in 140 characters or less why the man in your life deserves to be this year’s mancake. Done.

We’ll pick our favorite and announce a winner by Tuesday, June 22nd. Which means you’ll need to have your tweets in by Father’s Day (Sunday, June 20th).

Okay! Happy Mancake-ing!

The legal stuff resides here.

We’re doing a fun assortment of cupcakes for the Stanley Cup, and a few of our lovely Twitter friends asked us how we come up with our Quippies.

Enter: Josh.

Josh is a professional copywriter, Chicago native, die-hard Bulls/Bears/Cubs/Blackhawks fan, and also can clap louder than anyone we’ve ever met. (Don’t believe us? Try out-clapping him at a Gavin Rossdale concert. You will lose.)

He’s also super clever, smart, and the guy who said to Mari one day, “Hey, you should call your business Foiled Cupcakes.”

And he writes all of our Quippies.

So next time you’re enjoying some cupcakes and are reading our Quippies, we dare you to clap as loud as you can in honor of Josh.

Hello. My name is Jenn, and I’m a cupcakeaholic. I was raised by a mother who loved to savor the sweet side of life and did not have a problem handing me a brownie for breakfast. I’ve always loved to bake and create delicious desserts that bring a smile to the face and satisfaction to the stomach. When I found out Foiled Cupcakes was looking for a Cupcakeologist, I jumped at the opportunity. I wasn’t really sure if Cupcakeology was even a real field of study, (I’m still not sure to be honest, but I’m not questioning a line a of work that lets me spend my time swirling fluffy buttercream on top of freshly baked cupcakes) but I knew it was definitely a science I wanted to know more about. Now that I’ve joined the Foiled family, maybe you’d like to know a little more about me, the newest Cupcakeologist responsible for bringing to life those perfectly portioned pieces of heaven Foiled delivers.

My earliest baking memory goes back to the first grade, the year my best friend unwrapped an Easy Bake Oven on Christmas morning. This was definitely an experimental time in my baking career. I’m not sure if the inventors of the Easy Bake Oven intended the users to combine all of the baking mixes to create a hybrid cookie/cake/muffin (coakeffin?), but they should really consider including some kind of disclaimer warning against the hazards that this combination will produce, not only for your taste buds, but for the oven itself and the electricity in the rest of the house…

But those days are long gone. After moving to Chicago 10 months ago from Slidell, Louisiana, I now attend the Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts and am a few short months away from receiving my Associates in Baking and Pastry. When I’m not at school learning the French techniques and secrets (spoiler alert: butter, butter, butter), I can usually be found trying new recipes taste tested by my roommates or stationed somewhere in the stacks of the Chicago Public Library. I love to read, go to movies, jump on my mini trampoline, and will find any excuse to shed my flour and powdered sugar covered jeans for a pair of pumps. I’ve worked as a file clerk, construction assistant, and even a preschool teacher, but there’s no place I’d rather be than dancing around the kitchen, singing along to Jay-Z and whipping up something to satisfy a sweet tooth. I can’t wait to get to work this week and get started on the cupcakes I’m sure you are ordering at this very moment

‘Bye Y’all!

Jenn

The Great American Bake Sale in Chicago will be held this Saturday, April 17th. Our friend Maris is putting it all together, and it sounds super yummy!

Check out In Good Taste and the Great American Bake Sale to learn more. And go eat carbs to help out a great cause!

Hey, you. Designer. We want YOU.

Well, really, we want to give you two Dozen of our Favorites cupcakes and a pair of Cubs tickets. Yeah. We wanna GIVE THEM to you.

Wanna know why? Check out our post here.

And please submit a design. Because honestly, we really don’t want to run this race topless.

- Mari

So I’m running my first official 5K in honor of Foiled Cupcakes’ 5K Twitter followers. And because this’ll be much more fun with lots and lots of people (and the best way to bring groups together is FREE STUFF), we at Foiled Cupcakes present “FREE STUFF for Race to Wrigley-ers.”

FREE STUFF - OPTION 1: Run the Race to Wrigley with the Foiled Cupcakes team.

FREE: FOILED CUPCAKES 5K T-SHIRT. Not a shameless branding logo shirt either. One you’ll look cool wearing long after race day. And it’s gonna be one of those soft ones that aren’t all awkward and bulky, too. (Yeah!)

HOW TO CLAIM FREE T-SHIRT: (Please follow instructions; we know you’re able!)
- Register for the Race to Wrigley by Saturday, 4/17.
- Email your race confirmation # to info@foiledcupcakes.com (subject: “RUN CUPCAKE RUN!”) along with your name, Twitter ID, shirt size preference.
- We’ll get back to you with details on where to meet before the race to get your t-shirt. And yeah, it’d be nice if you wore it. Just saying.

FREE STUFF - OPTION 2: Design our Foiled Cupcakes 5K t-shirt.

FREE: TWO “DOZEN OF OUR FAVORITES” CUPCAKES *AND* A PAIR OF CUBS TICKETS. (Too bad if you’re a Sox fan. This is the Race to Wrigley, after all.)

HOW TO WIN: If you’re a designer (or even if you’re not), submit a cool t-shirt design to info@foiledcupcakes.com by Friday, 4/16 at 12:00 p.m. The only real rules (other than the legal stuff):
-Incorporate Foiled Cupcakes’ 5K Twitter followers
-Put our logo on it (as obvious or innocuous as you like)
-Dimensions: 8.5 x 11.
How we’ll pick a winner: by voting, of course. We’re a cupcakeocracy.

FREE STUFF - OPTION 3: Come hang out after the race.

FREE: POST-RUN CUPCAKES. We’ve organized a brunch Tweetup at Rockit. We’ll provide cupcakes. Buy your own food and drinks.

HOW TO ATTEND: Sign up here and tell us you’re going. Show up and eat. Easy peasy.

Pick your favorite and join us! (And wish me luck that I don’t die during this little 3.1 mile race.)

Love to all,
Mari

A few weeks ago, the lovely Archana at Edelman sent an email to us asking us to think of ways we could use Chevy’s vehicles to do social good in our community.

Here’s our video proposal, which was shown at their kickoff event last night. Let us know what your thoughts are or what we could do to improve our proposal and make this really KICK BUTT!

Learn more here.

Thanks to all who watched and didn’t totally fall out of their chairs laughing. Yes, this means you Erin, MJ, Paige, Jill, Dwana, Kelly, Jenn, Keidra, Scott, Jeff, Lori, and Barb.