All Over Albany

Confectionery House

The stuff cupcakes are made of.

It was 2007. The Great Mid-Decade Cupcake Craze took us all by storm. Bookshelves and feedreaders across the nation filled with cookbooks and blogs devoted to the humble cupcake. Cupcake-only bakeries opened (including one in Saratoga). The craze has died down a bit since then, but cupcakes remain popular. Popular and delicious.

I love baking cupcakes. Eating them, not as much, but I bake them often for friends, co-workers, and parties. And I used to read cupcake blogs frequently. It was through them that I learned of a well-stocked and impressive online supply store for serious bakers called Confectionery House.

While browsing the site, much to my surprise I noticed that the store is located right here in the Capital District, based out of a small building in Troy.

I had to pay a visit, and not just to indulge my need for polka-dotted cupcake liners and dinosaur-shaped sprinkles.

Confectionery House opened in 1994 in Troy. Back then, they sold supplies to local bakers and confectioners, and offered classes in baking and candy-making. The business expanded online in 2001, and the former classroom space is now the office of the online operation.

While they still have many local customers, most business is now conducted online, serving the nation's bakerati. In its online incarnation, the store has been featured in magazines such as Woman's Day magazine and Martha Stewart Living, as well as baking specialty blogs. Their patterned and colored baking cups are particularly popular with online customers.

What will you find inside the store? Their slogan is "Quality supplies for the serious baker, cake decorator and candy maker," and indeed you'll find a much wider variety of baking and candy-making supplies than is available in your local big-box housewares or craft store. You can find hundreds of different cookie cutter shapes, different shapes and sizes of professional baking pans and cookie sheets, pre-made frosting, flavorings, and fillings, candy sprinkles in shapes you never thought existed, all sorts of candy ingredients, and chocolate molds for every possible occasion (including what can only be described as "naughty molds."

Nearly everything in the store is available online and vice-versa. If by chance the store doesn't have something you need in stock, Confectionery House can special-order it for you.

Editor's note: Observant people in the crowd (which is to say, probably all of you) will notice that we changed the picture at the top of this post. Here's why. After thinking about Samantha's comment, we realized the photo of the box by itself doesn't give much perspective on this place. And in retrospect, we probably should have included the picture that's now at the top the first time through -- if not at the top, somewhere in the post. So, in short, we thought this post would be more informative with the new picture.

That said, we still think the photo of the box is kind of funny and highlights that this isn't your typical cake decorating store, so we've kept it. Problems, concerns? Email us: editors |at| alloveralbany |dot| com.