Until recently there was a gap on the Prague culinary market: American-style cupcakes. Since the mid-1990s, they had become a popular item, especially among office workers. Cupcakes had been around for a long time, but they suddenly transformed into more flavors and toppings.
Cobbler’s Prague Bakery opened its first permanent location at the Palladium shopping mall on Aug. 1.
Cobbler’s CEO Jiří Zuska had seen the popularity of cupcakes when he was in the US and realized there was nothing like it on the market.
For the opening day, he prepared 780 cupcakes in a range of flavors and toppings. The biggest sellers were red velvet, apple cobbler, coconut and peanut butter. While much of the business is meant for take-away, the dozen seats at the stand in the second-floor food court were filled. Currently, Cobbler’s makes 16 flavors.
The US Embassy in Prague sent Vice Consul Beth Fernald to the opening. Even though Cobbler’s Prague Bakery is a Czech company, she was happy to welcome a positive representation of American culinary culture. “I am pleased to be here because everyone likes cupcakes,” she said at the ribbon cutting. “Studies show that eating cupcakes can make you healthy. … so you should eat cupcakes twice a day.”
Zuska said that cupcakes with colored butter-based frosting had long been available in the Czech Republic, but his are different because the icing is made with cream cheese.
“Cobbler’s’ cupcakes are unique because they are made very differently than the cupcakes the people in Prague are used to. We use four different components: the cake, the filling, the frosting and the sprinkles. The cakes come in different flavors such as vanilla, chocolate and carrot cake,” Zuska said.
“The cupcakes are then filled with things such as homemade caramel, homemade peanut butter and homemade marshmallow filling. Our cupcakes are frosted with cream cheese icing rather than the traditional butter-based icings that Czechs are accustomed to. The cupcakes are then completed with an array of toppings such as chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, M&Ms and even the classic American rainbow sprinkles,” he added.
This type of cupcake became popular in part due to the show Sex and the City, which featured a cupcake shop. Chains inspired by the show popped up across the United States after that.
Zizka hopes to open more stands in shopping malls, especially ones near office complexes as office workers are a key target group.
The company offers special packages of cupcakes for office meetings and parties.
