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Sweet Touch
An arts exec turned cupcake designer publishes a baking book for kids
melissajofleming@att.net
Elaine Cohen enjoys adding a dash of edible joy to people’s lives.
“When you’re biting into a little cupcake,” Cohen said, “there is that really precious glimmering of what it’s like to release yourself from all the stress and anxiety and it gives you that moment of just, delight.”
At a cupcake-decorating gathering at a gourmet store, Cohen held up two halves of a chocolate cookie. “Now, we have the ears,” she explained, “and now we need to make the cat’s eyes.”
With a headband with orange tiger ears holding back her brown wavy hair, Cohen, 33, encouraged her listeners to decorate. Her blue-and-white gingham apron, once worn by a friend’s grandmother, added to her cheerful, Dorothy-in-Oz-like demeanor.
Since 2004, Cohen has run Cupcake Caboose, a cupcake-only catering company in Manhattan. She recently published a cookbook for children, Super-Duper Cupcakes (Sterling Publishing, $9.95).
Cohen’s professional background is in the art world. After working at the Museum of Modern Art, she began developing websites for the art, education and entertainment industries. After 9/11 and the burst of the dot com bubble, she lost her job, and decided to explore her passion for food. She already had experience: she worked weekends at Eight Mile Creek, a restaurant in downtown Manhattan, and partnered with well-known California chef Alice Waters to offer local organic food at New York area cultural institutions. The latter enterprise failed, but Cohen knew she wanted to venture out on her own.
Cohen grew up appreciating treats. Walking home from school on New York’s Upper West Side, she’d eat a snack, often a Mister Softee from the ice cream truck parked at the corner of 93rd Street and Central Park West. That fond memory inspired Cohen’s initial business concept of a mobile concession stand—a cupcake truck in Manhattan.
“The idea was that not only would it be a nice moment in your day, not only would it be a delight with a treat, but with kindness and a smile,” Cohen said.
So in the summer of 2004, Cohen headed out to Riverside Park in a royal blue and white egg-shaped GEM, a two-passenger electric vehicle, selling fresh mint tea, iced coffee, bottled water, and her vanilla and chocolate cupcakes. She decorated the car with loud cowbells and her cupcake logo. And she always wore a bib apron.
“I felt like I was doing what I wanted to do, which was the concept of spreading the sweetness,” she said.
Cohen has now moved away from the labor-intensive mobile concept, and primarily caters large events like weddings. She works with clients to develop the right recipe for the day, such as a green tea cupcake for an Asian-themed wedding.
“I really love the informality that the cupcake offers,” Cohen said.
As a one-person operation in the West Village, she bakes from six to 30 dozen cupcakes a month out of her kitchen.
Cohen wanted to write a cupcake decorating cookbook for children, to encourage others to find pleasure and delight in life, something her mother, Karen Lee Cohen, a children’s book author, used to stress. Cohen’s mother taught her to cook, and about the concept of baking as a way to spend time together.
Super-Duper Cupcakes means to bring adults and children together for some “cupcaking.” It features recipes for vanilla and chocolate cupcakes, buttercream frosting and 27 decorating ideas. Cohen lists 22 different candies or other types of decorations to inspire budding bakers. Super-Duper Cupcakes covers all the major holidays, with such creations as sweetiepie pumpkin, made from marzipan and green licorice candy.
“Cooking is a hands-on activity that parents and children both enjoy,” said Alyssa Volland, owner of Mini Chef NYC, which offers cooking classes for 2 ˝ to 7 year olds. “[The children] enjoy seeing the process of what it takes to get to a final product. [It’s] a little bit of math, a little bit of cooking, and then they get to eat their creation.”
At Cohen’s decorating event, adults and children alike picked up cupcakes, orange or chocolate buttercream frosting, and decorating aids such as red licorice string, marzipan pumpkins, black and orange M&M’s, chocolate sprinkles, red hots, fruit gem candies, and mini-marshmallows.
Miriam Winocour, who brought her two grandchildren in for bake sale ideas, made one for herself, and one to take home to 91-year-old mother.
“It’s such a small thing, a cupcake,” Cohen said, “but it nonetheless can be so valuable.”
Cohen, left, sees “spreading sweetness” as her mission. Photo by David S. Allee
Cohen focuses on baking for kids. Photo Courtesy of Sterling Publishing