Get ready for red velvet, chai latte, ginger lemon, banana dark chocolate, and more cute-as-can-be, freshly baked, no-need-to-share treats when Sprinkles Cupcakes opens on Sept. 23 at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto.
Yes, the cupcake bakery that’s all the rage with Tyra Banks, Oprah, Katie Holmes (Mrs.Tom Cruise), and other celebs is finally putting down sugary roots in the Bay Area. Other Sprinkles bakeries can be found in Beverly Hills, Newport Beach, Dallas, and Scottsdale. You can spot them easily by the lines outside the doors.
It’s only fitting that Pastry Chef-Proprietor Candace Nelson and her co-owner/husband Charles Nelson open a shop here. After all, Candace’s French-American great grandmother, Margaret Craig, owned three successful restaurants in the Bay Area for more than 20 years. Candace and Charles also are two former Silicon Valley tech investment bankers who spent long hours crunching numbers for others while they longingly dreamed of baking cupcakes. (Hey, I would, too!)
It wasn’t long before Candace left finance and enrolled in the professional pastry program at Tante Marie’s Cooking School in San Francisco.
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Sprinkles cupcakes are baked in small batches throughout the day, and contain no preservatives, trans fats, or artificial flavors. Its cupcake mixes also are sold at Williams-Sonoma stores.
The bakery’s boxes, plates, napkins, and shopping bags are made from recycled materials. Any unsold cupcakes left over at the end of the day at the Palo Alto bakery will be donated to InnVision, Silicon Valley’s largest provider of housing and services to the homeless.