Sophomore Kristine “Kristie” Coyne’s love of baking began when she was a little girl and she and her aunt made cookies together. A few years later, Coyne shifted her talents to baking cupcakes after she received a book entitled Hello, Cupcake! for Christmas. Since then, she has fostered her passion in the kitchen and baked and decorated a menagerie of different cupcakes for holidays and celebrations.

“I just started making cupcakes for color guard and bringing them in, and everyone just kind of loved them,” she said.

This increasing popularity of cupcakes is not seen just in Coyne’s kitchen. Since 2006, the cake decoration store industry has witnessed strong growth, largely thanks to the ever-popular cupcake-specialty bakeries. Despite a drop in disposable income during the recession, cupcake popularity has not waned, since customers view the cupcake as a relatively inexpensive indulgence. According to Perishables Group, a Chicago-based fresh food consulting firm, cupcake sales increased between nine and 13 percent per year nationwide from 2006 to 2010. IBIS World, the world’s largest independent publisher of U.S. industry research, predicts that by 2016 cupcake industry revenue will reach $1.1 billion.

The cupcake trend has carried over into popular culture with TV shows like the Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars,” a competition that pits four of the country’s best cupcake bakers against one another in three challenges to win $10,000 and TLC’s “DC Cupcakes,” which chronicles the life of two sisters who own Georgetown Cupcakes in Washington, DC.

Such a widespread cupcake movement has even reached Carmel. In the downtown area alone, there are “cupcakeries” like Holy Cow, Cupcakes!, The Flying Cupcake and stores like Auntie Em’s Frozen Custard and Cupcakes that serve the miniature treats as one of their staple menu items.

Coyne said she has witnessed the cupcake popularity firsthand. She has received multiple requests to make children’s birthday party cakes, but instead of a traditional sheet cake, customers now want tiers of cupcakes to create a cupcake tower, not unlike those seen on baking reality shows, like “Cupcake Wars.”

Likewise, Sarah Cawthron, pastry chef at Holy Cow, Cupcakes!, said she receives many orders like Coyne described. She said it is not uncommon to assemble a cupcake tower for a wedding, baby shower or other event. For example, Holy Cow, Cupcakes! recently provided one of its cakes for Butler Blue II’s 8th birthday party at Butler University.

“We have families that we have done their baby showers and the child’s first birthday party, and then we’ve done weddings and anniversaries, so we have a very wide demographic that we serve,” she said.

Cawthron said that during the summer months, the store provides cupcake towers for two to four weddings per weekend. She said once the cupcakes are placed on the tower, the resulting piece resembles an actual wedding cake. As an added bonus, it is easier to serve the dessert since it already comes in
individual portions.

Coyne agreed with Cawthron and said she sees many advantages to baking and consuming cupcakes as opposed to the traditional cake.

“It’s cheaper to make the cupcakes,” Coyne said. “It’s like a specific portion, so if I eat one then I’m eating the right portion, whereas with cake you can have different size slices. Cupcakes are also more uniform and easier to travel with.”

Cawthron said to keep up with the high cupcake demand, the staff at Holy Cow, Cupcakes! makes and sells anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 cupcakes per week. She said she has seen an increase in cupcake popularity and attributes part of the rise in demand to TV  shows  based on baking.

“Within the last few years, cupcakes had a good start at becoming a trend,” she said, “and once ‘Cupcake Wars’ and all of that stuff became really popular, then cupcakes became even more popular just as an everyday kind of thing.”