SIFT, A NEW CUPCAKERY IN SONOMA COUNTY, CELEBRATES THE ART OF THE CUPCAKE
 
Whimsical Delights You Can Hold In Your Hand… But Not For Long

 
COTATI, CA, April 16, 2008—Forget everything you ever knew about the cupcake.  With the opening of Sift: A Cupcakery this week in Cotati, master cupcake baker Andrea Ballus elevates the common baked confection to an edible art.
 
Consider the Orange Creamsicle—light, moist orange cake with cream cheese frosting—or “Pinking of You”, vanilla cake with pink vanilla buttercream. Ballus’ palette extends well beyond the pastel shades; her “Irish Car Bomb” combines Guiness chocolate cake with Irish Cream frosting into flavors that all but explode on your palate.
 
“The idea for Sift occurred to me when we were planning our Sonoma County wedding in Sonoma last year,” recalls Andrea Ballus. “We wanted to serve cupcakes, but all we could find were ones that tasted like plastic cupcakes,  or were too dry, or really boring . Let's face it, Sonoma County has tons of great wine, but it is severely lacking in the cupcake department. ”
 
Until now.
 
Ballus opened Sift with help from her husband, Jeff, and her mother, Catherine Richardson, an award-winning Sonoma County artist. The shop is as vibrantly conceived as its products: pink walls, a bright aqua countertop and chandeliers illuminating a dizzying array of lusciously decorated cupcakes.
 
In a nod to her Wine Country digs, Andrea Ballus offers a Chocolate Zinfandel cupcake and a Champagne cupcake, just two of her original concoctions inspired by local produce.
 
Andrea Ballus left a promising career as a fine dining consultant in Las Vegas, where she worked with that city’s growing cadre of nationally renowned chefs, sommeliers and restaurateurs. The career switch isn’t easy, she admits, but leaving Las Vegas was. A self-described “foodie”, Ballus was eager to don an apron, flour up her hands and create, with cupcakes as her artistic medium.
 
Ballus is part cupcake entrepreneur, part cupcake evangelist, declaring that “cupcakes should be their own food group” and blogging on the subject at www.cupcakeaday.com <http://www.cupcakeaday.com/> .   Her entrepreneurial instincts produced the “Bakers Dozen Club Card”  which entitles customers to receive the 13th dozen free.
Sift: A Cupcakery opens on April 15, 2008 at 7582 Commerce Blvd., just off Highway 101 in Cotati.   For more information, visit www.siftcupcakery.com <http://www.siftcupcakery.com/> .
 

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