Cupcakes Borrow Flavor from Classic Desserts

Simply Rita Cupcakes aren't decorated with technicolor sprinkles or covered with ready made frosting. Instead, owner Rita Halkias of Cheshire chooses a panoply of decor from foods as different as Rocky Road ice cream and strawberry daiquiris. 

Celebrating a year in business, Halkias transforms the simple cupcake into haute cuisine for the sweet tooth.

Each Friday and Saturday, Halkias makes up to seven dozen cupcakes that are as visually striking as they are delicious. She concentrates on making only three or four varieties each weekend, but her overall repertoire includes hundreds of recipes.

One typical weekend display offered four flavor themes: vanilla coconut, pumpkin spice, chocolate hazelnut, and chocolate/chocolate mousse.

"Whatever dessert exists, I can turn it into a cupcake," Halkias said, listing a range of ingredients with potential – chocolate chips, peanuts, miniature candies, and drizzles of light syrup. One invention evolved from her Greek grandmother's fig preserve recipe.

Baking began as a hobby for Halkias, but her professional experience started when her parents, Mike and Hope Halkias, put her in charge of the dessert menu at the family business they own at 133 Highland Ave.

After training as a special education teacher, Halkias began baking in earnest during a sojourn in Greece. Since returning to Cheshire a year ago, she has been producing fancy cupcakes at the family's pizzeria. "I've always been kind of artsy," she said. "This is my creative outlet."

If pizza and cupcakes seem like an odd pairing, Halkias explained that the ovens are perfectly suited for baking, with one qualification: pizzas must lie flat on the oven floors.

Subjecting delicate pastry to the same treatment would cause their bottoms to burn, so empty pans are inserted into the ovens to elevate the cupcakes and prevent any scorching. Twenty minutes of cooling pass before the cupcakes are artfully decorated with arabesques of flavored butter cream and other elaborate frostings.

The entire process takes a little less than an hour and a half. Despite negligible setup and baking times, it is a labor intensive regimen for such a small confection.

On each baking day, Halkias makes three batches, two dozen at a time. She also produces as many as 50 to 200 cupcakes for such special events as baby showers, sports parties, business events, and weddings, arranging them on beautifully ornamented pyramids so that guests can choose whatever flavor strikes their fancy.

With literally hundreds of possible flavor combinations and decorative themes to choose from, Halkias creatively solved the problem of offering a full menu by picturing many of her creations online at www.cupcakesathens.blogspot.com, both for inspiration and reference.

Halkias recommends Friday evenings as a particularly good time to visit because of the variety of cakes available by then, but patrons in need of a "cupcake break" can stop in anytime after 11:30 a.m. After that, Halkias said, "it's first come, first serve."