Before cupcake pans, personalized dessert portions were made by baking full-sized cakes and shrinking them in the dryer. Skip extra steps with today’s Groupon to Cake by Paula in Bridgewater. Choose between the following options:

• For $25, you get a dozen specialty cupcakes (up to a $72 value).
• For $50, you get $100 worth of a specialty cake.
  
  

Paula Surrette wields moldable sugar and aesthetic techniques to create traditional tiered and topsy-turvy specialty cakes as well as handheld treats. Delicately decorated cupcakes spring forth from ovens by the dozens, assembling into single-flavor formations sporting ornate, custom touches such as flower-shaped icing or frosted outlines of the periodic table. Mixing bowls and ovens conjure seven flavors of batter ranging from typical vanilla and chocolate bases to uncommon spice- or orange-infused confections. Custom cakes ($40+) commemorate birthdays, weddings, and graduations with colorful tiers of fondant- and vanilla-buttercream-coated dough. To assist in the creation of each unique dessert, Paula encourages customers to provide swatches of inspiration in the form of fabrics, flowers, or photos, which a team of Cordon Bleu–trained basset hounds uses to track down a compatible sweet.