Vancouver bakery offering ‘manly’ cupcakes

Just when Easy-Bake Ovens are going gender-neutral, the cupcake is starting to "man up."

In yet another example of pro-gender-divide marketing — Let's not forget Kinder Surprises for girls. Or manly candles. — a Vancouver bakery is trying to introduce "stereotypically manly" ingredients to cupcakes.

ManCakes Bakery Café, recently opened in downtown Vancouver, is offering sweet treats in flavours usually reserved for, well, things that are not dessert: Buffalo Wing, Whiskey Lime and Breakfast are all among the flavours currently available.

"The biggest failure, by far, was the blue cheese cupcake," says Geoff Hamilton, one of the bakery's three owners. "It was revolting. When I think of blue cheese, I think of chicken wings. So, from that spectacular failure, Tyler came up with the Buffalo Wing."

Hamilton and partners Jeremy Wong and Tyler Farstad all met as cheerleaders. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Hamilton and Wong came up with the idea for ManCakes after the female cheerleaders they were working with on the set of "Hell Cats" shared some too-sweet cupcakes with them. They brought Farstad, a cheerleader with pastry-chef training, on board and the three of them launched the ManCakes brand, first as an online business and now as a brick-and-mortar store.

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The Vancouver Sun reports that at least half of their customers are women.

"We want to say thank you to those who have been in to our shop and tried our cupcakes, and an even bigger thank you to the 'regulars' that have already made ManCakes a part of their daily lives," the owners write on the ManCakes' blog. "With great cupcakes, great coffee, and MANY great products still yet to come, we look forward to becoming a daily part of many more people's lives."

Last summer, the Wall Street Journal reported on the cupcake trend, warning investors that "the gourmet-cupcake market is crashing."

In Canada, however, cupcakes are booming, the Globe and Mail reports.

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"You're always going to have these trends where the honeymoon is over but then the product becomes ingrained in day-to-day life," says Geoff Wilson, a food-services analyst with FS Strategy Inc. in Toronto.

"Let's face it," says Heather White of the reality series "Cupcake Girls", "you're not going to stick a candle into a doughnut."

When it comes to cupcakes, would you swap chocolate for whiskey?

(And we're pretty sure "whiskey" is no longer considered manly. On the rocks, please.)