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Crazy for cupcakes
Photo
Debbie Protopapa ices a tray of cupcakes at her home in Struthers. Protopapa started Cupcake Crazy, a business that sells gourmet cupcakes. Cupcake Crazy off ers 50 gourmet flavors and four traditional ones. Protopapa also makes cupcake cakes and dessert cakes.
By jEANNE STARMACK
struthers
Entrepreneur Debbie Protopapa stood in front of her fledgling business and spread out her arms.
“This is my bakery right here,” she said proudly. In front of her was her oven and her mixer.
A few feet away on the table in her kitchen on West Wilson Street, trays of cupcakes were awaiting her finishing touches.
They all were baked that day from a mix that Protopapa “doctored up,” and they were ready for their dollops of made-from-scratch icing.
Protopapa picked up a decorating bag and deftly squeezed icing onto her fresh creations. Among them were four of her 50 gourmet flavors: Cherry Almond, with cherry- almond buttercream frosting and a maraschino cherry perched on top; Chocolate Lover’s, with devil’s- food cake infused with chocolate filling, chocolate buttercream frosting sprinkled with chocolate shavings and topped with chocolate hearts; Peanut Butter Cup, with a mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup center surrounded by devil’s-food cake, peanut-butter buttercream frosting that’s drizzled with melted chocolate and a piece of peanut butter cup; and Snickerdoodle, with cinnamon-infused white cake, sweet cinnamon frosting and a sprinkle of cinnamon.
Oh, sugar — for anyone who’s ever thought working for him- or herself would be really sweet, Protopapa is proof that it’s so.
She has a full-time job four days a week at an office. But during her evenings and weekends, she’s mixing and frosting and decorating. At those times, she becomes Cupcake Crazy — its owner and sole employee.
Business has been steady, she says, since she began baking cupcakes for profit nine months ago.
“I decorated cakes for 17 years when the kids were little,” she said. The kids are now 24, daughter Michelle; and 27, son Michael.
“I stayed home with them and baked and decorated cakes. Once they got to school, I worked at two bakeries and did wedding cakes out of the house.”
When bakery hours got too hard to mesh with family time, she went to work in the office, where she’s been for nine years. But those cakes still were calling, and she decorated cakes at the Struthers Dairy Queen for a short while.
Then the cupcake trend began, with stores popping up in Los Angeles and New York over the past several years, and television shows from “Sex and the City” to this season’s “2 Broke Girls” prominently featuring the little confections.
“When the cupcake trend started, I got the idea,” said Protopapa, herself a fan of Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars.”
“I sat down one night and thought of what kind of flavors I could have,” she continued.
“I stopped at 50, and came up with my own recipes. I write them down so they are consistent.”
Protopapa would like her business to grow, but like many other entrepreneurs with an idea and a dream, she has questions.
Profit margins are high for her now, she said, because she doesn’t have much overhead.
“But when you move into a place, needing to know how much money you need, that’s what I have trouble with,” she said. “I’m going to have to find somebody who knows how to do all that.”
Her family is behind her. Her husband, John, a teacher in the Youngstown schools, is supportive, she said, and Michelle, who lives a few blocks away from her mother, might just be recruited.
As she contemplates growing her business, she appears content to be Cupcake Crazy right in her own kitchen.