Props, Praises, and Cupcakes for the Best Administrative Professionals on Earth!

April 22nd is Administrative Professionals Day and Earth Day.

Celebrate those who make you look good!  Administrative Professionals Day highlights the important role of Administrtive Professionals in the modern economy worldwide.  This year, Administrative Professionals Day happens to fall on Earth Day as well.

Plan a joint celebration if you know an Administrative Professional that is the best in all the earth at what they do!  Your Administrative Professionals deserve all the props and praises for all they do.  And yes, cupcakes too!  So, go ahead, pick up a box or two.

If you decide to shower them with our yummy cupcakes, you should know that our current 12-pack regular and 24-pack mini gift boxes are made from SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative) lumber - lumber collected and reforested utilizing environmentally friendly practices.  That should make you feel extra good too!

One more thing, be sure to brush up on the 7 Things That Administrative Assistants Hate About Their Bosses and make a silent pledge to avoid them!

New Retail Hours

We're pleased to announce our new retail hours!  Starting tomorrow, we will be open Monday to Saturday from 10AM - 6PM (or until sold out). We're excited to finally be open to people like Barbara who stopped in last week and told us in no uncertain times we need to open for her and other cupcake lovers in our neighborhood.  It seems she was speaking for every single person that has told us to operate a storefront the last couple of years.  That's it!  We've heard you guys and we're pushing past our fears and anxieties and going for it head on!  Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for cupcakes and other items in stock.  We'll post on social media if we are sold out prior to our posted time. Looking forward to seeing you soon!

Sweets for Your Sweet!

Valentine's Day is almost here so let's get to work!  Can't decide what to get?  We've got two assortments for ya.  Our Classic Valentine's Day Assortment contains 3 Dark Chocolate Bliss, 3 Vanilla-Vanilla, 3 Red Velvet and 3 Chocolate Fudge cupcakes.

Classic Valentine's Day Assortment

The Love Birds Assortment includes 4 Red Velvet, 4 Vanilla, and 4 Chocolate Raspberry (chocolate cupcake with raspberry filling topped with Callebaut chocolate buttercream and a fresh raspberry).

Love Birds Assortment

Our couriers are ready to deliver throughout the city. Check out our delivery areas here. Place your order by February 13th at the veeery latest to guarantee delivery on Valentine's Day.  Super important!  We'll also fill up our case with cupcakes, heart-shaped sugar cookies, and cake pops so stop in to see us for a variety of Valentine's Day treats.  We're at 5392 Peachtree Rd, Atlanta, GA 30341.  Our hours that day are 10AM to 6PM (or sell out).  Call ahead and we'll gladly place your order aside - 404-949-0409.

XOXO!

Day of Giving

We've been tossing around the idea of a Day of Giving or our Give Back Day where we give back to the community.  We know what we'd like to do - give cupcakes away on March 9th.  However, we don't know how.  Should we have it at our bakery where everyone that comes in gets a free cupcake or do we just go out into the community?  The day itself holds special meaning for us and is inspired by our mom who was a big giver.  It is a way to honor her by doing something near and dear to her heart.

This would be the first time that we've done anything like it and we'd like for it to be meaningful.  Having it in our bakery of course would be very convenient and make it easy to re-stock if we were to run out.  The logistics of going out into the community had us in a tizzy so we posted our dilemma on our facebook page.  From the responses we've gotten, going out into the community makes more sense since it is for the community.  We'd love to hear your thoughts.  Where should we go to hand out our cupcakes on March 9th?

Friday's Flavors

Hey y'all!

Here's a look at what we're baking tomorrow, Friday, January 18th:

Birthday Chocolate - chocolate cupcake with vanilla Italian meringue buttercream and birthday sprinkles.  Just plop a candle on top and you're good to go!  If it's your birthday, of course.  If not, just skip the candle :-)

• Birthday Chocolate
• Birthday Vanilla
• Caramel Vanilla
• Carrot
• Chocolate Fudge
• Cookies n Cream
• Red Velvet
• Sunny Lemon
• Vanilla/Chocolate
• Vanilla-Vanilla
• White Chocolate Raspberry
• Snowball
• Cookie Dough

Phew!  It would have been easier to list the only flavor on our menu that we're not baking - S'mores.  Tomorrow would be a great day for a Baker's Choice if you haven't tried us yet and want to try a little bit of everything.  To order, give us a call at 404-949-0409 since we are past the 5pm day-before order online deadline.

Oh, before I forgot, we're baking inauguration cupcakes for one of my former co-workers who recently discovered my new job and has been faithfully ordering ever since.  Thanks B!

K.  Bye!

XOXO

- MSL

Hello 2013!

Hi Everyone!

Hope all sixteen days of the new year are going well so far?  The year started out really solid for us.   Let's just say that we were really, really looking forward to a new year and new beginnings towards the end of 2012.  So far, this year has not disappointed.  We started out with our friends at Saks Fifth Avenue placing an order for the entire year!  Imagine that?  Throughout this year, we'll be delivering cupcakes to them regularly on a monthly basis and we're just thrilled to have begun the year with such an arrangement.  This is something we kicked around in our heads - the idea of delivering cupcakes on a regular basis to our customers.  We didn't even have a name for this 'program' when we got the call to do just that.  So, look for some kind of corporate gifting program from us this year.  Still have no idea what to call it.

Also, just this past week, we posted on our facebook page that the president of one of the biggest, most recognized, brands in the world went to our lil' website and placed an order for his wife's birthday.  That was just out of this world.  Being that I spent an entire semester in business school doing case studies on his company and that they are all over the place, you can imagine why we're so over the moon that this happened.

New year, new resolutions.  Well, kinda sorta.  Here's what we're looking forward to as a team:

• More opportunities to connect with our customers in a retail setting.  Not sure what that means, but we'd love, love, love to have more Bakery Days!
• Classes.  We'd love to offer cupcake decorating classes and demos.
• New flavors and new products using somewhat unusual ingredients as well as items from our local farmers market.  We're really excited about this.  Specifically, the thought of all the testing and sampling to come.

Here's wishing you all a healthy, happy, and successful year.  We are truly thankful for your support over the years.

XOXO

-MSL

Last Day for Thanksgiving Pre-orders!

Hi Everyone!

Hope you're having a great time preparing for Thanksgiving!  Just a quick heads up: today is the last day to place pre-orders for Thanksgiving.  We are open Wednesday November 21st from 10AM to 6PM. On Wednesday, we will have some cupcakes in the case just in case anyone forgets to pre-order or needs additional cupcakes.  Those cupcakes are subject to sell out and will consist mainly of the Thanksgiving top sellers.  So far, the top sellers are: Red Velvet, Pumpkin Spice, Caramel Apple, and Carrot.  In that order.  If you're not sure what to take to your Thanksgiving gathering, we suggest a little of each and you should be good to go! 

What's your Thanksgiving Eve routine?  At 6.01PM, I’m off to work on the trays of macaroni and cheese that I volunteered to take to the King’s Table on Thanksgiving Day. Keeping in mind that I've NEVER made such huge amounts of mac and cheese before, that should be interesting!

Thanksgiving Hours:

Open Wednesday 11/21 10AM - 6PM
Closed Thursday 11/22 and Friday 11/23
Open Saturday 11/24 10AM - 2PM

Happy Thanksgiving from the Lenox Cupcakes Team! 

Here we go again...fraudulent cupcake orders

It's been a while since we've gotten one of these emails and all of a sudden, we've gotten two of them, two days in a row.  I thought I'd post them, just like Kari of Retro Bakery, to warn others about scams like these.  In the past, I wasted time responding to these requests, but can now spot these a mile away.

Here's an email we received on Friday:

Hello

My name is Jennifer Williams am hearing impaired i cant use phone,You can only email or text me verify any information, that is why i chose to email you,I want to make order for 30 Dozen individual Cup Cakes Chocolate Flavor and strawberry for my Dad's B-Party and This is a pick up order so it will be pick up by 4:pm by my private courier services on 14Th of December so can you handle that for me and let me have the total cost plus tax so i can make the prepay payment with my credit card,and let me know the TYPE OF CREDIT CARD YOU ACCEPT OVER THE EMAIL OR
TEXT ?

My Text Only number: 256 346 5498

Kind Regard
Jennifer Williams

A combination of some or all of these indicators set off an internal alarm that an order could be fraudulent:

1. Large order
2. To be picked up by courier service
3. Payment by credit card over text or email
4. Unable to communicate by phone
5. Grammatical errors

Food Network's 3 Days to Open

 Photo Credit: 3 Days to Open

 

3 Days to Open is my new favorite show on Food Network.  Anyone seen it yet?  It's got Iron Chef (and my personal hero) Bobby Flay rescuing businesses in need of serious help three days before they are to open.  After each episode, viewers can go online for updates and I was fast to hit up the website foodnetwork.com/3days to see how the food entrepreneurs were doing.  I also read quite a bit of the online reviews and was shocked by many of the comments.  This is an awesome show!  Some people commenting said that they didn't think it was possible for some of the business owners to be so green and have little or no money so close to opening.  They thought all that was staged for a 'reality' show.

Guess what?  This sure happens in real life.  People go into business not knowing exactly what lies ahead.  I remember being shocked, alarmed even, by the amount of work that goes into running a bakery.  Going from a part-time side gig/hobby to a full-time business was an eye opener. A lot of problems that Bobby Flay found within the first day of working with the businesses, I also had and will always work on.  For someone like me who didn't go to culinary school or work a day in the industry (gasp!) prior to opening my business, the show is providing me with free education. Bobby Flay scores major points for being patient with the business owners and for sharing his expertise and even his recipes with them.  I watched all four episodes in one sitting and can't wait to watch upcoming episodes, with my pen and notepad beside me.

Market Days!

Hi Everyone! Seems like everyday we get people asking when we are going to open up for retail at our current location. While we are not quite ready for a full-blown retail operation, we are very pleased to offer Market Days on Saturdays! Market whuh? Let's explain. Our Market Day is our own little in-house farmers market-like situation. It's a time to chat, try samples, and grab goodies to go!  In the very beginning, our goal was to sell our cupcakes at farmers markets across the metro area. In fact, our very first blog post was dedicated to this. The whole market thing didn't really work out because, well, frosting and hot, humid weather don't really get along.

What we did love about our farmers market days was meeting new people, introducing our products to first timers and of course providing happy little take-home packages full of our sweet treats. This past Saturday, we quietly (as quiet as three balloons tied to a bistro chair outside our door) tested the waters and were thrilled at the response. That said, we'll be open Saturdays 10AM to 1PM and can't wait to see ya!

Location: 5392 Peachtree Rd, Chamblee GA, 30341.  Down the street from Maison Robert, Zen Tea, Steam Koffee,  Frosty Caboose and next door to Carrie's Bridal Collection.

Spring Cupcakes!

Our favorite time of the year is here and we have new cupcakes to boot! Without much ado, we are thrilled to present you with the addition of six cupcakes to our everyday flavors:

Big Dip: Chocolate cupcake with cream cheese frosting coated in chocolate and
topped with crunchy, caramelized hazelnuts

Chunky Monkey: Banana cupcake studded with chocolate chips with chocolate buttercream topped with Valrhona chocolate pearls and a banana chip

Coco-Nut: Coconut fans rejoice, coco-nut is ba-ack! Coconut cupcake with cream cheese frosting rolled in shredded coconut

Pink Lemonade: Lemon cupcake topped with cherry buttercream and candied lemon peel

Raspberry Swirl: Vanilla cupcake with raspberry swirl with cream cheese frosting topped with a pink rosette and raspberry puree

S'mores: Chocolate cupcake on graham cracker base with marshmallow frosting topped with a toasted marshmallow

Our Springtime Cupcakes are available through June 20. Enjoy!

Sweet Elise

My sweet Elise is gone. For those who may have met her at the Phipps Plaza store, she was the sweet Lady quietly helping out around the store, organizing and labeling every.single.thing. in our storage area and cleaning up in the kitchen so it sparkled like her kitchen at home. She gave me the idea of putting those half-circles on the sides of our custom boxes so they could slide open easily. She helped us settle into our new studio and didn't stop telling me how much she loved the space. All that labeling sure came to good use during our move.

To me and my three sisters, she was our precious gift. We are so proud to have had her as a mother. I can’t wait to pull up pictures of birthday cakes she baked for us when we were kids. Our birthdays were such a big deal to her. I remember she had to go out of town for work on my tenth birthday. Before she left, she made sure everything was set, my outfits (I had options, y'all), the food, the party favors, the activities, the cake, everything. At the time, I was sad that she wouldn't be there, but at the same time, I was excited because she'd planned this big 'ole party for me. She ended up making it back into town on my birthday (only God knows how she pulled it off) and my joy knew no bounds. It was an amazing party! She’s the reason I wanted to grow up and do the same for my children. We were the ‘big cake house’ growing up. The one where you always got a big piece of cake at birthday parties.

To be honest, I have thought about closing up shop to deal with everything. It seems so hard when you’re going through something like this. However, this past week, between shifts at the hospital, I found it healing to be able to frost and decorate cupcakes at the studio before rushing back to take over from my sisters. I loooooooooooooove my mommy. Ugh! It hurts! At the same time, my mom loved to say “be positive”, so I will. Je t’adore Maman et je t’aime.

It's a wonderful world of cupcakes

So, 2012 has rolled on by with nary a post thus far. We've been busy catching up from the holidays and putting together plans for the new year. For the first time, we have all our flavors planned out for the entire year. We styled them and are happy with the final 42 flavors. It was a painstaking process shortlisting the finalists and we hope you'll be happy with them too. A new change this year is that we are now offering 12 everyday flavors plus six seasonal flavors. This means that on any given day, we'll have 18 flavors to offer our customers. No more

having to guess what special is available on what day. Or, hearing "heeeeeeeey, is it possible to get Wednesday's special on a Saturday?" Hopefully, this would be a positive change as well.

In other news, we are really loving our new digs. We get sad though when people call us from our old location and ask where we are. We feel so bad that they've made a special trip only to hear that we're ten minutes away. Also, we're getting a lot of pressure to open a storefront but that's a conversation for another day. We're really happy where we are and can't wait to bring to fruition what we've got planned for our new location. Thanks for all your support and thank you for allowing us to keep doing what we love.

Still accepting holiday orders

There's still time to place your holiday orders. We've got a whole team ready to assist you whether you decide to pick your cupcakes up at our new bakery or have them delivered. In addition to our 12 everyday flavors, we've added six holiday flavors into the mix. Our holiday flavors are:

Chocolate Covered Cherry - Chocolate cupcake with cherry buttercream dipped in chocolate coating and a cherry on top
Chocolate Peppermint - Chocolate cupcake with peppermint buttercream topped with crushed peppermint candy
Gingerbread Spice - Gingerbread cupcake with cream cheese frosting dusted with cinnamon sugar and topped with a fondant gingerbread man
Pumpkin Spice - Spiced pumpkin cupcaketopped with cream cheese frosting
Snickerdoodle - Cinnamon cupcake topped withEuropean-style buttercream sprinkled with a dusting of cinnamon-sugar
Snowball - Vanilla cupcake with cream cheese frosting topped with a blizzard of shredded coconut flakes

Give us a call at 404-949-0409 to place your order.
Our holiday hours are as follows:
12/24: 10AM - 2PM
12/25: Closed
12/26: Closed
12/31: 10AM - 2PM
1/1: Closed
1/2: Closed

See you soon!

Coming Soon: Lenox Cupcakes at 5392 Peachtree Rd

It’s hard to believe that we finally have a place to call our baking home. After our temporary lease at Phipps Plaza ended, we were pretty sure where we would be going next. In fact, we’d planned on that location long before our final days at Phipps. We had our design in place and were ready to move forward when we found out that the restaurant next door didn’t want a cupcake shop in the same plaza. Womp womp. We found a couple more spots we thought would be ideal but the deals somehow fell through right before we signed the lease. Finally, it dawned on us that these seemingly perfect spaces, may not be ideal for us. We thought about our needs as a family and what we needed in terms of work/life balance and a space we initially didn’t think was a fit suddenly started to make sense.

Our new space at 5392 Peachtree Rd would be our main baking facility where we would bake cupcakes for delivery and pick up. It’s just perfect for that. When we were at Phipps, we found ourselves baking more for pick up and delivery than we did for walk-ins. We often thought it would be great if Saturdays were reserved just for walk-ins. That scenario might just be possible at our new location. We’re really excited about the opportunity to serve our customers and still spend quality time together as a family. It’s exciting, scary and exciting all over again.

In our earlier days as a delivery-only company, I remember being frustrated about not having a place for people to come and pick up their cupcakes. And then when we had the temporary store, I remember longing for the days when I could volunteer at my son’s school or go on our annual vacay. I’m hoping this time around, I’ll actually be able to volunteer more often without cancelling at the last minute and even though we probably won’t be able to take the last two weeks of the year off as we did in times past, I know for sure we won’t be open on New Year’s Day :-)

So long Phipps Plaza...

It is amazing to think that it was a little over a year ago that we began working on plans for our pop-up store at Phipps Plaza. It has now been a year and we are thankful to have been able to test our concept in a retail environment. We met some wonderful people and it was gratifying to witness customers enjoying our cupcakes firsthand. We will no doubt miss all our customers, especially those who drove a great distance to see us.

We are truly excited, energized, and ready for the next phase of our business venture. For now, our cupcakes are available by delivery, throughout the metro-Atlanta area, while we are working on a more permanent space. Stay tuned to this blog as well as our facebook and twitter pages for new updates!

Our vintage Coca-Cola cooler

Our custom pink and brown boxes

Our cute tees designed by Melanie of Lucky & Lovely

New Summer Menu!

New Summer Menu (photo credit: Ase Photography)


Hi Everyone!

It's official - summer is here! After several weeks of testing new flavors at the store, we are excited to share with you our new summer menu:
Daily Specials:
Monday
Cookie Dough
Snickerdoodle
Tuesday
Nutella Swirl
Salted Caramel
Wednesday
Mango Key Lime
Cotton Candy
Thursday
Chunky Monkey
Key Lime
Friday
Cookies n Cream
Orange
Saturday
PB Chocolate
Pistachio
Sunday
Blueberry Coffee Cake
Pink Lemonade

We have also made changes to our Everyday Flavors with the addition of Carrot, Chocolate Fudge, Chocolate Salted Caramel, and White Chocolate Raspberry. Enjoy your summer and we look forward to seeing you some time!

White Chocolate Raspberry


Pistachio

Mango Key Lime

Guest Baker

Wow, it has been a while! We're still here, selling out on cupcakes thanks to our fabulous customers, and baking baking baking!

We're particularly excited about this Saturday - we're having a guest baker (mom) in the store, and we just know she's going to come up with something delicious (think pound (cup)cake filled with raspberry and topped with cream cheese icing, and then drool).

So come by and see us this Saturday, and let us know what you think!

Have a great weekend folks!

Showing Party Pictures - Cupcake Art Party

Happy (rainy) Tuesday!

We had such a fun art party last Friday...our winners brought their family and friends over to brag about their wonderful work of art while nibbling on some of our cupcakes, of course. It wouldn't be a party without us :-).

Our first place winner, Ginger, was so sweet to donate her painting to us, so it's hanging at the store! Check out some pictures below, and visit our Facebook page for more pictures.










Stay Dry, Atlanta!

It's a Cupcake Art Party!

Happy Monday everyone!

Remember this fun event we had with Creatively Yours? - http://lenoxcupcakes.blogspot.com/2011/02/paint-cupcakes.html

We promised to pick three winners (which was so hard to do - check out our Facebook page for pictures), and we picked four! We've had the pleasure of displaying these originally fantastic paintings at our store, and we're having a party on Friday March 11 at 7p.m. to celebrate their great work!