Cupcakery grows business from Vista to Five Points
She doesn’t like red velvet. She didn’t do red velvet.
But red velvet is what started her career.
Donna Vazquezgomez, the owner of Lil’ Bits Cupcakery in Five Points, started making cupcakes professionally three years ago. She had lost her job and decided to turn something she loved to do into a living.
Her son, JP Vazquezgomez, wanted red velvet cupcakes. It wasn’t a flavor she enjoyed. She reluctantly made a batch just for her son and he took them to Pearlz Oyster Bar in the Vista, where he works as a line cook. That’s where it all began. The servers, chefs, hostesses and managers all ogled over the homemade treats, and not long after, the restaurant began to exclusively carry Vazquezgomez’s cakes.
“I thank the good Lord above and Pearlz in the Vista,” Vazquezgomez said. “They are the ones who opened their doors and gave me a chance.”
Since her first batch of red velvet cupcakes made a pre-shift appearance at Pearlz, Vazquezgomez has been shaping the oyster bar’s dessert menu and filling special orders online. Six weeks ago, however, she opened her own “cupcakery” in Five Points: Lil’ Bits.
Inspiration for the name? Vazquezgomez stands 4 feet 11 inches.
“But she packs a punch,” JP said.
She makes every cupcake in the store. On Wednesday afternoon, she stood just behind the register with a big pitcher of batter and a wooden spoon.
She gushed about each of her creations — the peach and cherry cobbler cupcakes in particular — as she continued to whip the bowl of buttercream yellow mix. It would soon be a dozen pineapple cupcakes, a smaller version of her dad’s pineapple upside-down cake.
When she was a child, Vazquezgomez’s dad had always made pineapple upside-down cake and topped it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. When she would make it for her two sons, it was too much. So, she wanted to make a mini version of her favorite childhood dessert.
Instead of vanilla ice cream, she tops it with a dollop of cream cheese frosting.
“We like to play around — we like to build; we like to explore,” Vazquezgomez said.
Lil’ Bits has three flavored cake batters: red velvet, vanilla and chocolate.
Vazquezgomez uses Hershey’s chocolate cake recipe “across the board.” It’s that good, she said.
The vanilla batter has been more of a challenge. Some like the cake spongy, but some like it soft, Vazquezgomez said, and until she can get it perfect, she’s trying to land somewhere in the middle. But she will find the perfect vanilla cake batter, she said.
“I will,” she emphasized.
The Lil’ Bits cupcakes hinge on more than the cake’s flavor. There are fillings and toppings and complimentary combinations that create a menu made for the sweet and savory, the chocolate and the vanilla.
Vazquezgomez is most proud of the cobbler cupcakes. The peach cobbler center is filled with sweet, glazed peaches, and the vanilla cake is baked up around the sides. It’s all closed in with a dollop of that cream cheese frosting.
“They are cupcakes, but they taste like cobbler,” Vazquezgomez said.
Vazquezgomez’s absolute favorite cupcake, however, is the Nillaberry, a vanilla cake with berries in the middle. She likes the fruit-based cakes the best. The strawberry shortcake cupcake has fresh-cut strawberries stirred straight into the batter.
Cupcake-making truly is an art form. People know what they want and its hard to satisfy them all, but Lil’ Bits tries to bake for its customers.
“Something as simple as cake-to-icing ratio will kill you,” JP said. “You don’t want people scraping your icing off.”
Price is also a selling point for the Five Points cupcakery. Vazquezgomez knows bakeries charge a lot of money for cupcakes, but she just can’t do it, she said.
This is where the bake shop has really mastered the market: It has 2-ounce single cupcakes (the size of a mini) for $1 and 3-ounce cupcakes for $2.
The 2-ounce Lil’ Bit is good enough on its own, but instead of getting a regular-sized cupcake, you can sample two different flavors for a better value: four ounces for $2. I did, and it was great.
Lil’ Bits makes full-sized cakes for special order as well and still bakes Pearlz’s dessert menu. It has also started supplying cupcakes to Roll Call Deli on Main Street.
Vazquezgomez is also a Gamecock — a USC fan for 50 years, she notes. She’s a “horrible, horrible” football fan, but an enthusiastic baseball fan, and she’s all about sharing the cupcake love with the university.
She will be baking 300 cupcakes for the Vagina Monologues on Friday and 1,000 for USC’s Relay for Life in April.
And even as I walked out the door, Vazquezgomez wanted to emphasize the greatness of the cobbler cupcakes. She called me over for one last glance at the computer, where she houses a gallery of cupcake glamour shots, and widened her eyes as she talked through her recipe.
“There should be laws against those things,” she said.