February’s MOTM “Red Hot Valentine”

The 10 flavours that we have been offering for a year now have been incredibly popular so we can’t bring ourselves to get rid of one to make room for a new flavour. But, at the same time, the creative genius that is our ManCakes baker keeps churning out amazing, delicious creations that we just can’t keep to ourselves any longer! With that in mind we have created a one-of-a-kind service for Vancouver that will deliver a brand new, unique and exclusive flavour of ManCake to your door every single month!  We call it ManCake of the Month (MOTM).

When you subscribe to MOTM, not only do you get some of the best cupcakes in the world delivered to your door, but you also get access to several other perks like ability to suggest unique flavour ideas that you’d like to see us make, automatic entry in to prize draws, and you’ll even save 10%/order over a one time order!

February’s flavour is called “Red Hot Valentine” and it is a perfect blend of Fireball, cinnamon candy and creme brule. This is perfect if you’re looking for something a little more adult than a box of cinnamon hearts.  A must have for  Valentine’s day.

Click the “Order ManCakes” tab above, and then click on ManCake of the Month to order!

Only those who knew us before ManCakes know that “ManCakes Bakery” was not our first naming choice. In fact, we went through a few different options for name and logo before settling on what you see today. Now, I’m going to share a few of these other options with you today, but before I do I want you to understand that there is no judgement in brainstorming! Which is good… because some of these names were terrible.

The first name that we “settled on” was MachoMan Bakery. We were looking for something that sounded manly and memorable, but avoided what we call the “d bag” factor. MachoMan was both manly and memorable, but we were walking a thin line on on the third criteria. Especially considering how closely related we would be to Macho Man Randy Savage. Never the less, we pushed forward and even designed a few logos for MachoMan. It all came crumbling down, however, after our first ever taste test. Although we were looking for feedback on our flavours (which we got lots of), we also received feedback on our choice of name. And it was universally negative. MachoMan was out.

So we went back to the drawing board and came up with the 2 new ideas. First was ManUp Bakery. Sounds great, right? Manly, and it’s like we’re always issuing a challenge to try our cupcakes. Perfect. Except the website would have to be www.manupbakery.com which, when you look at it, reads like “manoop” and makes our company sound like and east indian bakery. Not what we’re going for. Next we played with the name Bachelor Bakery. Kind of cool sounding… has the alliteration… Gives the idea of manliness, but still sounds sophisticated enough to create something delicious. All good! Now, I want you to take a minute and do a google image search “bachelor bakery.” Go ahead. I’ll wait…

Aaaaaand now you know why we didn’t go with that name either.
After much thought and a few other failed naming ideas, we went forward with ManCakes Bakery. We get a lot of praise on our name now, so we think we made the right choice. The only negative feedback we’ve ever received was from food blogger “followmefoodie” who said our cupcakes are too delicious to have a lighthearted name like ManCakes. We say there’s no harm in being both lighthearted AND delicious!

In the beginning there were 2. Two friends who, at the time, had no allegiances to cupcakes or pastries of any kind. They were business guys. Jeremy had a number of successful businesses of his own and Geoff had worked in a corporate environment for the past several years. These two men were linked by their common interest in competitive cheerleading and thus were exposed to cupcakes through the many female athletes that they knew from the sport. Cupcakes, as you may know, are quite popular with the ladies which baffled both Geoff and Jeremy. Often you could hear one of them exclaim “I don’t understand why these girls think a tiny piece of cake topped with a ton of icing is so good”. Neither could come up with the answer, but both of them had ideas of how these dull, cookie cutter cupcakes from all around Vancouver could be improved. Finally, they sat down and made a list of what they would do to improve these cupcakes. This is the actual list that they put together:

• LESS ICING
• filling in the middle of the cupcake
• interesting flavours
• unique ingredients
• different textures
• easy to eat

   

After the list was done they sat back, content that they had solved the problem of boring cupcakes, and continued on with their lives not expecting to ever deal with cupcakes again.

Later that month Jeremy approached Geoff and reminded him that they actually had a friend who was a trained, master pastry chef. Tyler, a former cheerleading teammate of theirs, was indeed a very passionate pastry chef who was no longer working in the baking industry but may have been looking for a way to use his excellent baking skills. A meeting was arranged.

The three men met for lunch on a sunny summer day in 2011 to discuss this glaring hole in the cupcake market. After a couple hours, and several napkins worth of ideas and brainstorming, a tentative partnership had been reached and Tyler was geared up and ready to start experimenting.

From there, several months of experimenting, branding, marketing, taste testing and research followed to make ManCakes Bakery what it is today!

-Men of ManCakes

Hello World!

Taken at the Easter Seals “Drop Zone” event in 2012. Later that day, Geoff rappelled down a downtown Vancouver building.

We are Geoff and Jeremy (AKA, the men behind ManCakes).  We are creating a weekly blog to allow you to not only get to know more about ManCakes, but also more about us.  Everything from new flavour ideas to funny delivery stories will be posted on here.  We will also be doing contests to WIN ManCakes! We don’t know what or when those will be just yet, but check in weekly to keep up to date!

If you have a question for us, or a suggestion for a blog post just send it in to us a eat@mancakesbakery.com and we will do our best to include it!