Tracie Cakes, West Des Moines

Tracie Gregson loves the inherent nostalgia of cupcakes. Each bite reminds her of home. But she’s also aware of the deceptively simple dessert’s endless flavor possibilities. When a friend needed a treat to complement his gourmet barbecue, Tracie took up the challenge and grabbed some slabs of smoked bacon. After some experimentation, she emerged from her kitchen with a maple-bacon cupcake, with a vanilla-spice base crowned with brown-sugar-maple frosting, coarse sugar, and crags of smoked pork.

That cupcake memoir typifies the ongoing flavor development at Tracie Cakes. Eschewing mixes, Tracie prefers scouring online purveyors for the finest ingredients she can find. Shipments regularly arrive with gourmet dutch cocoas, velvety sour creams, and finely sifted powdered sugars that Tracie uses because they balance the sweetness—not too sweet—of her buttercream frostings without sacrificing texture. Such fine ingredients go into her more than 20 flavors of cupcakes, from her personal favorite white wedding cake to the coconut cloud, made with organic cloud flour.