By Shera Dalin
Photograph by Katherine Bish
Our cup runneth over with cupcakes, those delightful mouthfuls of joy from childhood. St. Louis is jumping on the gourmet-cupcake bandwagon that started on the East and West Coasts with celebrity-hot places like Sprinkles and Magnolia Bakery. At home, newbies like Jilly’s Cupcake Bar offer a gourmet dessert that isn’t just for kids. Open since late summer, it offers 14 flavors of ginormous gourmet cupcakes (about $3.50 each) with luscious fillings and ultralight butter-cream frostings. So what does it take to elevate your cake to gourmet? Here’s the take on all things cupcake.
House-made, not pre-made. The honeycomb-shaped white-chocolate square perched atop the Bee Sting is made entirely in-house, including the tartly sweet crushed Lemonheads hidden in the honeycomb. So are the achingly rich chocolate and mocha ganaches, as well as the peanut brittle.
Grab a spoon. Actually, a soup spoon. Ladle off a full spoonful encompassing all the layers: frosting, cake and filling. That’s the key to tasting all the flavors and not being overwhelmed by, say, the seedless raspberry jam in the PB&Jilly.
Mastering moist. To make the cupcakes tender and moist, executive pastry chef Bryan Buffa is a stickler about not overworking his batters. Scraping the bowl sides is key, as is adding ingredients one at a time, rather than how your mom did it, with one big dump in the mixing bowl. And to ensure a moist mouthful, Buffa pierces each cake with a fork and allows house-made syrups to infuse the just-baked morsels.
Luxe and lush. Only high-end flavorings such as Tahitian and Madagascar vanillas will do. The rich ingredient list also includes Swiss Felchlin chocolates, which are handpicked and mixed in small batches.
Less is more. Less sugar in the butter-cream frosting avoids overwhelming the tongue and allows the other subtle flavors of the gourmet ingredients to shine through. Underbaking the cupcake ever so slightly also helps keep the cake moist and delicious.
Are you getting fresh? Owner Jill Segal insists that all Jilly’s cupcakes are baked fresh every day. So what about the leftovers? Various civic and charitable groups have been the beneficiaries of the day’s unsold cakes. And Segal admits all the employees have added a pound—or five—from take-home treats.
8509 Delmar, 314-993-5455, jillyscupcakebar.com.
