| I recently had the honor of interviewing Juli Stertern-Gill, the owner of Just Cupcakes!, the creator of couture cupcakes based in Melbourne, Victoria. Her creative artworks are so adorable and have been featured in the Target Australia Catalogue and Country Life Magazine. You can also see more of her beautiful creations on her Flickr photo stream. | |||||
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| Just Cupcakes! in Target Australia Stores Catalogue | |||||
| (photos used with permission from Just Cupcakes!) | |||||
CZ: Who taught you how to bake? JC: I learned the basics thoroughly in High School and the rest by trial and error. Mum wasn't that great a cook (sorry Mum!), so my learning both to cook and bake was almost a necessity! As a voracious reader, especially of baking books, I would strike on an idea from a recipe and tweak it - sometimes baking it dozens of times, until I had it just as I wanted it. CZ: How popular are cupcakes in Melbourne? JC: Cupcakes are not as popular here as they are in New York - or any of the major US cities, but they do have their admirers! There are not too many cupcake-only retail bakeries in Melbourne, but there are enough that you can get a good idea of what our "cupcake-ology" is all about. CZ: How and when did you become passionate about cupcakes? JC: I have been baking all my life, for family and friends, and for friends of friends. I would get requests for special occasions, and to cater birthdays, teas and bbqs, and the requests always seemed to have a baking focus! Over time, it became far easier to pre-portion what I was baking - everything was baked in bite sizes, from cookies and tarts to cakes. Over the past 3- 5 years, my focus narrowed and cupcakes are where my energies seemed best focused - and certainly most appreciated! CZ: Why do think cupcakes have gained such popularity these days? JC: Cupcakes really are the perfect food - in fact, they could be a food group all on their own! They're single-serve, hand-held, cost-controlled, and best of all, they take us back to our childhood, before we had bills and kids and mortgages. Sitting down to a cupcake and a cup of tea or coffee is a perfect indulgence - and who doesn't smile when they see a cupcake that is waiting patiently for them to eat it? CZ: How long has Just Cupcakes been around? JC: Just Cupcakes! is about to enter its third official year of trading, and we are looking forward to many more years of cupcake creativity! CZ: What is your most and least favorite part about running Just Cupcakes? JC: My absolute favorite thing is hearing my customers tell me that my cakes look too good to eat. That means that I have done my job as I see it - take the cupcake and make it extraordinary. I also love the decorating part - from making the flowers (I try to make all my decorations wherever possible) to assembling the final designs. People wonder where I get the patience from, but to me, what I do doesn't require patience - I love doing it too much! CZ: Why did you decide to focus on just cupcakes, mini cakes, and small cakes as opposed to other kinds of desserts? JC: I get the most enjoyment from these, and, from a purely business perspective, there are a lot of other folk out there doing those other deserts, so it doesn't make sense to start your business in the middle of an already crowded market. Go to any market, gourmet food store or even cafe, and you will be spoilt for choice on chocolates, pies, tarts, desert sauces etc. That being said, I do have an ancillary range of products that I release at Christmas, as I have had a lot of requests from customers for other goodies, and who am I to refuse what my customers want? It's a small range; toffee-chip cookie bites, decorated sugar cookies, one-bite brownies, butter shortbread nuggets, chocolate pots and pecan tassies. All small, single-serve indulgences, that carry on the theme, but are not everyday product offerings, to keep them special. CZ: What makes your cupcakes unique? JC: It's not so much my cupcakes that are unique, it's my entire business approach. Instead of offering a set range of flavours and frostings, I like to "reverse-engineer" the entire process, and start with the important features of my client's event. A recurring theme, a colour scheme, a particular flower or icon like a butterfly, that is integral to their event. Building on those most important things, working with the client, I come up with a design that integrates everything so that their cupcakes are a perfect reflection of the day, rather than being one item that appears within it. Every item of the finished cupcake is custom, from the cake, to the case, to the frosting flavour and type, colours and styles of decoration - nothing is left unconsidered and everything is what best suits the customer's needs. CZ: What flavors do you offer and which is the most popular? JC: The only cake I will not bake as a cupcake is my traditional Bourbon fruitcake. Apart from that, your request is my command! I have about 10 recurring flavours, from Mango Royale to White Chocolate and Raspberry, Lemon Supreme to Classic Carrot, but far and away my most popular flavours are Chocolate Fudge, which sits comfortably half-way between a mudcake and a chocolate cake, and my Vanilla Bean. These two flavours are requested for 9 out of 10 bookings. CZ: Do you do custom cupcake design and how far in advance should people book you for events? JC: All my cupcakes start their life as custom designs. When I consult with a client, I take along an inspiration album for those times that they just can't picture what can be done with a cupcake... and sometimes they will see a photo and say "That's it! That's what I want!", so I do get design repeats... but whenever possible I like to be original. Bookings are crazy. I am currently holding deposits for 2010, and the end of this year is going quickly. There are peak wedding seasons in Melbourne, and there is some fierce competition for the most popular periods, so I like to advise that once you have settled on a reception centre, start thinking about your cake. In the "off" season, generally a few weeks is standard. I like to keep it that far out as it gives me the best amount of time possible for making decorations and having them thoroughly dry in time. I have been known to sneak in a couple of last minute bookings though! CZ: What would you say is your signature cupcake or style? JC: When I first started out, there was quite an emphasis in my mind of having to have a "signature" look, and I pursued swirls and twirls until I went around the bend with it all! And then I discovered my own niche - fondant, in both rolled and poured styles, which no-one else appeared to be doing in Melbourne. It took a l-o-n-g time to get my head around elevating the cupcake from easy, breezy casual-chic butter cream to the high-style, couture chic possible with fondant-based decoration, but I am really happy to have developed the style I have. | |||||
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CZ: According to you, what makes a perfect cupcake? JC: It absolutely must taste as good as it looks. That is paramount. I have eaten so many pretty cupcakes that are dry, stale, shriveled and shrunken, all in the name of research! Sure, these cakes looked amazing, but that all went to waste as soon as I tasted them. And a great cupcake shouldn't have too much frosting. My preference is for a ratio of about 3:1 in cake to frosting. Too much more frosting than that, and all you taste is sugar, which is not good! The flavour of the cake also has to be solid - it can't get "lost" under the frosting. CZ: Where do you get your recipes from? JC: Well, I read recipe books regularly, some of them over and over again, until a flavour combination or recipe just "clicks". I'll bake it as per the published recipe to see how it works on a few levels - method (there is no point having a great cupcake that is just too difficult, tricky or messy to bake), appearance (I personally like a little dome on my cakes, and will instantly fail a cake that bakes flat or shrinks back on cooling, or, heaven forbid, separates from the case), texture, and finally, taste. I'll then tweak it a bit in terms of method, or ingredients, if the taste is superb, in order to get it to a point that works for me. This may involve months of fiddling until it's just right, but at the end of that time, I know that this is my work, and that the recipe will work every time I bake it. Sometimes though, like in the case of my favourite cake, brown sugar spice cake, a flavour combination comes about from an existing recipe. Once you get a fantastic base recipe, you can customize it in many ways to get all sorts of flavour changes, by substituting one ingredient for another, and adding flavour boosters, like spices. CZ: How often do you eat cupcakes and what is your favorite kind? JC: I try a piece of cake from every batch I bake, to check for flavour and texture, so some weeks I may get cupcake every day, some weeks just weekends. I don't eat a whole one though - just a taste, which is about a 12th of an undecorated cupcake. I would hate to get cupcaked out! CZ: What’s the best thing about eating cupcakes? JC: Cupcakes make everyone happy. It doesn't matter how old or young you are, they are happiness generators - and what is not to love about that? If you take too big a bite, and get frosting on the end of your nose, you giggle, wipe it off with a serviette, and go back in for another bite, because cupcakes are too great to eat to be worrying about anything else but the enjoyment of eating them. How many other foods make you giggle when you get them all over yourself? CZ: Out of the many cupcakes you’ve designed, which are your favorites? JC: There are so many, and they change every week! I love the classic elegance of my white dogwood wedding cupcakes, but I also love my whimsically-styled cakes with ruffled blossoms and butterflies. And I’m also really loving the Chinese New Year cupcakes I got to do this year, red on red with gold accents… it’s too much like having to choose your favourite child! Too hard, too hard!! | |||||
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CZ: You mentioned in your website that you use the freshest ingredients and even make your own vanilla bean syrup. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? JC: I don't like to buy ingredients in huge quantities at a time, even though there is money to be saved by doing so. Because I batch-bake, rather than process bake, for example if I buy a 15 kilo bag of chocolate, and then don't have any orders for chocolate cupcakes for 3 months, that chocolate is going to be stale, and will not be up to standard, and will not produce a cake that I would be happy to eat, let alone sell. I made the decision very early on to only buy the best ingredients that I could, and for them to be as fresh as possible - which means buying as close as possible to when I bake. Yes, it costs more, but I believe that the proof is in the cupcake. Would you prefer to eat a cupcake made with eggs 2 days inside their "best before date" - or eggs that are 2 days old? Making my own vanilla bean syrup simply follows that rule. I know exactly what is, and more importantly, what isn't, in my syrup. I don't mash up the vanilla pods into a mush and then filter alcohol and distilled water through it the way that commercial brands do. I split the beans, and then allow them to steep in my syrup base. I go through about 3 litres of my vanilla syrup a year, so I am constantly putting up new batches! The finished product is dark, like molasses, thick, and heavy with suspended vanilla beans. It also smells totally amazing! The freshness and quality of the ingredients I use is reflected in the finished product. I don't use stale ingredients in my own baking, so there is no way I will use them in a product that I expect others to pay money for. CZ: If you could invite any 5 people in the world to your private cupcake party, who would you invite? JC: First up, my husband. He supports everything I do, and to not have him there wouldn't be natural! Next up would be my Dad. I would love for him to see what I have done. (I think he would be proud). The final three seats would go to (in no particular order) Humphrey Bogart (straight from the set of Key Largo), Kirk Douglas (still in his riding gear from The Man From Snowy River) and Audrey Hepburn (at any age, this lady is 100% class). Imagine the stories they could tell while giggling and wiping frosting from the ends of their noses... CZ: Who do you look up to within the industry and why? JC: Definitely Kylie Lambert, of Le Cupcake, in Sydney. What this woman can do with a humble cupcake keeps me on my toes every day! Kylie has also been a much-appreciated supporter of my work, and we have a great mutual-admiration society going on! The uber talented Peggy Porschen - to spend even a day in her kitchen would be priceless. Allysa Torey and Jennifer Appel - the two women who started it all with Magnolia Bakery in Bleeker St, NYC. Even though they have parted ways both with each other, and with Magnolia, their heritage and influence lives on. Martha Stewart - this is a woman who has it all worked out. One day, I hope to be able to work it out a la Martha! Delia Smith and Julia Childs, who between them re-educated the world that proper old-school, step by step baking is far better than just chucking stuff together from a box mix. CZ: What’s next for Just Cupcakes? JC: Head down and bum up, as my Dad used to say! This year is all about building my business; working on it as well as in it, and continuing to feel very blessed that I am able to get out of bed every day and be exquisitely happy doing what I do. I have a few irons in the fire; there have been some approaches for workshops that I am considering - it's a bit up in the air, but we are working on things, and we'll see what happens in the next couple of months. All in all, the next 12 months are shaping up very well indeed! (Which I am very grateful for!) CZ: Do you have any tips or advice that you would like to share with our readers? JC: When I first started out, it was really hard to get a read on what my friends and family thought of my plans, as they were too busy laughing! So I doubted myself a lot. Don't do that. Keep your focus, keep true to your dreams and plans, and keep plugging away. Even if baking cupcakes is only something you do for friends or workmates, keep at it, keep practicing, keep dreaming and most important of all, keep baking! (That, and get yourself an oven thermometer and digital timer - you will wonder how you ever managed without them!) | |||||
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| Just Cupcakes! in Country Life Magazine Dec 2008 Edition | |||||
| (photos used with permission from Just Cupcakes!) | |||||
Thank you, Juli!
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