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BY JILL LIGHTNER
PHOTO BY LARA FERRONI
In 1989, Maya Angelou famously said, “I don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.” The principle she applied to revolution is one I apply to bakeries. If you plan on eating something that offers minimal health benefit—possibly even negative health benefits—then it needs to be great, and it needs to lead to at least fleeting happiness. It needs to feel personal, not necessarily like it was made just with you in mind, but like whoever made it really wants you—you there, in the cozy old sweater, with the chilly hands and the rained-on library book under your arm—to enjoy your treat. It’s this idea that shoots Cupcake Royale to the top of Seattle’s cupcake mountain. Born of a very loving revolution, these little confections are quietly marching us to a better world, one sugary bite at a time.
Owner Jody Hall and Director of Operations Melanie Bonadore have an absolute dedication to putting their money where their mouths are. For Jody, this means big picture activism; for Melanie, it translates into a remarkably detailed search for local ingredients. Think of a Cupcake Royale cupcake as the intersection where the fluffy cake of starry-eyed idealism is topped with the creamy frosting of good business sense. Take a bite of that metaphorical cupcake. Of course it’s delicious.
Throughout 2009, Jody was all over the news, talking not about cupcakes but about the most unavoidable topic of the year: health care. As a small business owner with between 60 and 70 employees, she sees her company’s insurance premiums jump every year (the most recent rate hike: 18 percent) and is continually frustrated by the non-negotiable pricing system. So, she signed on with Washington CAN’s Secure Health Care Campaign (www.washingtoncan.org). In April of last year, she met with Director of the White House Office of Health Care Reform to present her perspective and priorities for her growing company. After devoting a tremendous amount of effort to speaking on the topic, she’s generally pleased with the results of her efforts.
“I feel like it’s a proud moment in our country for creating this sweeping legislation; they [insurance companies] can’t discriminate because of pre-existing conditions anymore, and that’s huge. I’m frustrated that there’s not a public option, to keep insurance companies honest. But those 2,000 small businesses in Washington state, that felt like we weren’t being properly represented, finally have some level of a voice that we didn’t have before. We [Small businesses] are about 40 percent of all workers, and the biggest chunk of uninsured workers."
Bakeries as a whole—with the dominance of flour, chocolate, sugar and coffee in their menu items—are heavily reliant on large-scale commodity foods. From the beginning, Jody developed a partnership with Direct Trade Stumptown Roasters for her coffee; they’re Stumptown’s biggest Seattle customer and shipments of freshly roasted whole beans arrive twice each week. The coffee source was an easy choice for Jody (who worked for Starbucks back when they had just a few local shops), and from there she looked towards minimizing her carbon footprint while maximizing social justice benefits when dealing with commodity products. Hiring Melanie Bonadore was her solution, and what an effective solution she is.
Melanie’s been working with a long list of suppliers, sourcing eggs and dairy products from Medosweet and blackberry honey from GloryBee Foods, and using organic, Fair Trade Theo for their chocolate and cacao nibs. Washington farms and regional processors show up all over the seasonal “Cupcake of the Month” menu: Olmstead Orchards for Rainier cherries, Skagit Sun Farms for strawberries and raspberries, Foraged and Found for mountain huckleberries, carrots from Ralph’s Organics in Mt. Vernon, Tiny’s Organics for Honeycrisp apples, Woodring for apple butter and cranberry sauce, and Oregon’s Stahlbush Island Farms for pumpkin purée. You’ll even find northwest booze in a few flavors: Clear Creek’s cherry liquor, and now Dry Fly whisky for their maple-whisky frosting. Overall, this translates to each cupcake averaging 66 percent locally-sourced ingredients (some, like the carrot cake, are higher).
The biggest partnership in terms of local sourcing is Shepherd’s Grain. When Melanie approached this co-op of no-till, direct-seed wheat farmers, they weren’t producing a commercial cake flour. She sent them a precise spec sheet of what Cupcake Royale was using at the time—right down to the protein content—and Shepherd’s Grain was able to give them a precise match. No-till means just that. It’s a simple form of post-harvest composting that lessens erosion, leading to healthier land and improved water retention in the soil. No-till also translates to less fuel being used per acre and less of a need for irrigation. Shepherd’s Grain emphasizes crop rotation methods that encourage microbial growth, which leads directly to lower use of pesticides and herbicides. And, GMO wheat isn’t permitted in the co-op. (Home bakers can buy Shepherd’s Grain all-purpose flour under the “Washington White” label at most regional groceries.)
This year, plans are in the works to expand Cupcake Royale’s locally-grown possibilities with a bit of help from Amy Pennington, regular Edible Seattle contributor and author of Urban Pantry: Tips and Recipes for a Thrifty, Sustainable and Seasonal Kitchen. Heading into summer’s harvest season, Amy’s going to lead Cupcake Royale bakers in Pantry Boot Camp sessions, where she’ll teach the staff to preserve fresh fruits for year-round use in cakes and frostings. Jody and Amy are in the midst of scheduling classes in fruit preservation for Cupcake Royale customers, too, bringing together Amy and several local farmers to give demonstrations about selecting great fruit and ways of best preserving it for year-round use. (Customer classes are tentatively scheduled monthly from June to October, but details won’t be confirmed until late spring).
And the cupcakes themselves, those wee symbols of just how sweet justice can be? The cake choices are simple: chocolate, vanilla, red velvet (a lighter-than-devil’s-food cocoa cake, tinted bright red for reasons lost to culinary history) and carrot are available year-round, with a mix of eight different frostings (vanilla, chocolate, lemon, cream cheese, salted caramel, peppermint, lavender and orange). Most months have just one seasonal flavor, adding a new cake (banana, Guinness and pumpkin have all made an appearance) to the roster. Occasionally, like during fall’s Cupcake Harvest Festival, several specials will overlap, presenting the eternal bakery dilemma of how one is supposed to choose from among several delectable possibilities.
To which we can only say, vive la revolution.
Jill Lightner’s favorite cupcake flavor is pumpkin with maple cream cheese frosting. She thinks cupcakes makes a splendid breakfast for budding revolutionaries.
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