Vivid green key-lime cupcakes, banana-pudding cakes topped with petite vanilla wafers, and towers of tiny cakes destined for a wedding: all might appear at once in the workshop behind the scenes of A Cupcakes World. Founder Tenika White carefully designs each one, constantly inventing new flavor blends to surprise her customers and customizing flavors and toppings to satisfy her clients’ personal orders. Each flavor is so meticulously imagined that the lines blur between original and specialty cupcakes; both categories together boast such varieties as peppermint patty, boozy pink champagne, and cherry almond vanilla.

Tenika allows patrons to exercise their own culinary creativity by building their own cupcakes. To that end, myriad cake flavors, fillings of lemon curd and chocolate mousse, and spirals of frosting wait to be chosen, like kids in a pickup game of football or adults in a pickup game of financial advice.