Tyler Long frosts 192 cupcakes to start the day.
Using a butter knife, she applies cream cheese frosting atop red velvet cupcakes. She smears strawberry cream cheese frosting on strawberry cupcakes.
After she frosts a chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting, she gently rolls the top of the treat in white chocolate sprinkles. After topping the chocolate peanut butter cupcakes in peanut butter butter-cream, she rolls the frosting in Butterfinger crumble.
This is a dream job, and she knows it. But it’s still a job. She has been baking since she was small, but not nearly as much at home anymore since she bakes for a living.
She’s not complaining. She likes her work very much. She needed three months practicing everyday to perfect the frosting swirl.
That was four years ago when she was working at the original Long Beach Frosted Cupcakery. Now she’s the manager of the Hermosa Cupcakery on Hermosa Avenue that opened over the summer.
“It’s super fun when people come in and say, ‘I’m having a terrible day,’ and they are having a cupcake and you know it will make them feel better,” said Long, 25.
Long arrives at 8 a.m., three hours after the baker. Working together in the kitchen, the cupcakes pile up.
It takes four hours to bake 16 dozen cupcakes and three hours to frost. That’s just to open the doors. Throughout the course of the day they will make about 300 cupcakes.
The Frosted Cupcakery took over the first-floor storefront in the former Bijou Building where the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf used to be. The women in the pilates classes in the building sometimes stop in just to inhale the aroma.
The Cupcakery, which also has a location in Hollywood, has been approached to be on the hit show Cupcake Wars more than once. Long said although honored to be invited, the proprietors are not interested. Making a thousand cupcakes in a limited amount of time is not the proper way to make the product and they won’t participate, she said.
One of the challenges of baking, frosting and selling cupcakes for a living is not eating them all. “At first, it’s hard to resist,” Long said.
Men tend to like the chocolate peanut butter cupcakes. Kids tend to like the chocolate, cookies and cream and mint chip cupcakes. Women tend to like the chocolate, red velvet and strawberry cupcakes.
The most popular flavor of the month is probably December’s gingerbread with lemon butter cream. The ice cream cupcakes are popular in the summer, but nothing is more popular than Valentine’s Day in a cupcake store.
“Valentine’s Day is the frosting Olympics,” Long said.
