Go West, Cupcake Man

Joe Ramaikas's one and only act of vandalism took place 20 years ago. After leaving a job, he sat waiting to be interviewed by a temp agency. Discouraged by the prospects, he leafed through a magazine and saw a recipe for maple cream pie. He tore out the page, went home, and baked, for the first time. Over the next 20 years, Ramaikas refined the recipe, making the pie for every possible occasion. "I became known for it at holidays," he laughs. "Everywhere, I took that pie everywhere."

These days, Ramaikas is known around Maplewood and South Orange as "that cupcake man," owner of The Cupcake Corral, which opens its first retail location on Ridgewood Road in June. The shop will sell cupcakes, pies—including Ramaikas's familiar maple cream pie—cakes, his mother-in-law's mandelbrot, coffee, and beverages. In summer months, Ramaikas looks forward to adding ice cream sandwiches—homemade ice cream and cookies, naturally—to the menu.

In moving to the Ridgewood Road site, Ramaikas joins GAS Gallery and Studio as a new arrival. The territory is familiar to Ramaikas, however, as he lives nearby. Orchard Park was one of his "testing grounds" when he first started baking cupcakes. "I was just putzing around with different recipes," he recalls. "I'd take the stuff out there and see what went first and fastest."

Ramaikas's non-traditional test market reflects his path to cupcakes. After working in the music industry for about eight years, he turned to commercial voice-overs. At the same time, he and his wife Felice moved to Maplewood, and Ramaikas found himself a stay-at-home-dad to son Hank.

"I was trying to make something of my own," said Ramaikas of his beginnings. "I saw my son coming home from preschool, his face dyed with whatever from the top of a cupcake from wherever. I wanted to know what was going into those products. At the same time, I looked around and said, 'Cupcakes are huge, really huge. We need a place for them here.'"

Ramaikas sought recipes and found them close to home. His wife's "pretty amazing" family has a cookbook that includes several generations' worth of favorites. "They make great food," he explains. "I looked in my mother's recipe file, too, and just started to make stuff." His goal was to make simply "incredible baked products," and he landed on a chocolate cake recipe "so good that it's ridiculous." 

Another family legacy is the western influence heard in the name Cupcake Corral and the names given to each cupcake type. Ramaikas was raised in rural upstate New York. His parents, who came of age in the 1930s, listened to country and western music. "They grew up with those influences," explains Ramaikas, "so I grew up with those influences." His first concert, while still a toddler, was Johnny Cash, which he considers a good start in life.

Now his cupcakes are tributes to the greats of C&W music. "The King" is a banana-peanut butter combo named for Elvis. "Johnny" is chocolate on chocolate, a tribute to the "Man in Black." 

Concerts have continued to serve Ramaikas well. A longtime fan of singer Tori Amos, Ramaikas had a chance to meet her at Radio City Music Hall. Hearing that she liked cupcakes, he brought a dozen. Halfway through the show, she leaned into the microphone and told the assembled thousands that she had fallen hard for The Cupcake Corral's finest. The moment was caught on Youtube and has become legend at The Cupcake Corral. 

The Ridgewood Road store has a bunkhouse style, what Ramaikas describes as "cool, funky, functional, retro-Western." As he turns to take a call, an "emergency 911" appeal for six dozen of his finest, Ramaikas looks like the Lone Ranger of local baking, rescuing the mild west (of the Hudson) from so-so cupcakes and the honky-tonk blues.