Contest Gives Patrons a Taste of Their Own Cupcakes
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When the upscale TriBeCa bakery Tribeca Treats wanted to come up with some new cupcake flavors for its fall menu, it turned to the most creative people around: its customers.
In a contest that ended this week, customers submitted recipes and patrons voted on the results in a taste-off of the potential new flavors. In the end, a raspberry and blueberry confection frosted with cream cheese icing, Berry Berry Good, took the cake.
“We love being creative with the flavor ideas,” the bakery’s owner, Rachel Thebault, said. “We have such a small staff — we figured we should use our customers’ ideas.” In the last two weeks, the bakery created miniature cupcake versions of the recipe entries for customers to rank on a scale of one to 10. Finalists included a pumpkin spice cake with cinnamon vanilla buttercream icing, Sassy Pumpkin; a marbleized cake with vanilla frosting and a chocolate center, Vanilla and Chocolate Swirl; and a chocolate cake with marshmallow icing and coconut shavings, the TriBeCa Snowball.
The winner, Bjorn Miller, went home with a dozen Berry Berry Good cupcakes, baked personally by the bakery manager, Taryn Blaker.
Based on the success of this summer’s contest, Ms. Thebault said the bakery hopes to hold another competition in March.
