The Sweet Cupcake Connoisseur

by Kimberly Field

Sweet treats are really love notes we give one another, says Tiffany Rose Goodyear. “My dad always frosted our birthday cakes. That was him telling us that he loved us,” Goodyear says. “My company is really a love letter signed ‘Yours truly, Cupcake’.”

The Denver entrepreneur and cupcake connoisseur can tell an epic story in a couple of indulgent bites. She founded Yours Truly Cupcake in 2009, an innovative dessert catering company that sweetly tells her clients’ stories by sparking the senses. “We create a unique sensory experience,” she says. Yours Truly Cupcake dessert presentations combine sumptuous tastes and aromas with cupcakes and bite-sized desserts decorated like tiny jewels in richly layered displays that delight the eyes. Goodyear spends time with each client discovering how to communicate their message in a personal and signature way. Denver’s top event planners and businesses such as JK Photography, John Tobey of John Tobey Event Design and Heather Allen of Table 6 Productions appreciate how Goodyear and the dessert stylists at Yours Truly Cupcake transform a cupcake into a meaningful and memorable dessert that puts a delicious cap on a beautiful event.

Football and Fun

Yours Truly Cupcake sweetens corporate events and gift programs, nonprofit extravaganzas such as 2013’s luxurious, Gatsby-themed ICON Awards as well as personal events such as the celebration when Denver Broncos wide receiver Eric Decker wed singer Jesse James last summer. Yours Truly Cupcake baked delights were featured on the reality show, Eric & Jesse: Game On in November, 2013.

“Yours Truly Cupcake wanted to tell Eric and Jessie’s story in a very personal way—with cupcakes,” Goodyear recounts. “It was our greatest challenge and our greatest success.” Along with her culinary team, Goodyear combined the couple’s request of mermaids, Bronco colors and footballs, with an old-fashioned microphone, treble clef and baseballs with favorite childhood candies to commemorate significant events in the couple’s lives such the date Jessie signed with Mercury Records, Eric’s college athletic career and his debut with the Denver Broncos as well as her girlhood love of mermaids, magnolias and Moon Pies. The fun display invited conversation and sparked sweet memories for friends and families. Guests nibbled a variety of signature treats including CoCo, ViVi and Red Velvet and Bronco’s quarterback Peyton Manning’s favorite, Margarita.

Marquis Lang, the head baker, brings to the Yours Truly Cupcake kitchen her classical training in pastry and cake decorating. She serves as the confectionary bartender deconstructing cocktails and recombining the flavors as spirited treat flavors like the Irish Car Bomb and Fireball Whiskey. Yours Truly Cupcake was first on the Denver scene with liquor-infused cupcakes, infusing both cake and frosting with brews such as Guinness, local craft beers and even Pabst Blue Ribbon for a rich, satisfying taste in a tiny package.

Yours Truly Cupcake infuses events with a touch of performance art provided by the Cupcake Cuties. Modeled after a 1950s cigarette girl, each Cupcake Cutie is dressed in stylish vintage attire, and mingles with guests and doles out cocktail-inspired treats. They add a sweet, intoxicating flair along with a glamorous invitation to indulge in dessert.

Better Together

Working with experts in the confectionary, food and liquor industries, Goodyear and the Yours Truly Cupcake team uses a deconstructive and complimentary approach to develop wine, liquor and beer dessert pairings. The complimentary piece looks to bring out the key flavor notes while the deconstructive side examines the components and ingredients of the spirits themselves.

In Yours Truly Cupcake, Goodyear combines her passion for baking with business savvy and an eye for the next big thing. After college, she worked in advertising at a Washington D.C. firm. She delighted her friends with her baked goods, and wowed judges in a cupcake contest with her carrot cake cupcake from her mother’s recipe. Goodyear returned home to Denver to earn her master’s degree in advertising management from DU, while exploring the cupcake business concept and cultivating relationships with dessert lovers and local businesses. Yours Truly Cupcake grew unhurriedly as one of the new pioneers in the still under-the-radar neighborhood of RiNo with her tasting room location at Larimer Street and 30th. The industrial neighborhood is in the midst of a creative renaissance. The ‘hood now includes art galleries, a distiller, craft brewers, coffee roasters, and culinary outposts like The Populist and the Infinite Monkey Theorem winery. The neighbors often stop by the walk-up window to sample the day’s treats.

“That wouldn’t have happened a year ago,” Goodyear laughs. The creative neighbors often collaborate, cooking up the next big thing on the Denver scene. Fueled by sugar, of course.

Bio: Kimberly Field is a Colorado author and frequent contributor to Colorado Expression.