It seems there's no escaping the popularity of cupcakes these days. They're everywhere! You may have read about A Little Cupcake Shop in DeVargas Center recently, and you may have tried a few varieties at Dulce, the new bakery on Don Diego Avenue. Now keep your eyes peeled for products from Dream Cakes, a fully licensed bakery specializing in the world's most portable single-serve cake product. Home baker Laura Kosky has parlayed her love of cupcakes into a startup business and offers some unusual flavors you probably won't find anywhere else in Santa Fe. The Southern Belle, for instance, is a praline cupcake with a praline filling, all topped with cream cheese icing and crumbled pecans. How about a Bear Claw — a brown-sugar cupcake filled with almond paste and topped with almond and brown sugar icing? For chocolate lovers, there's the Sabra, a devil's food with orange zest and orange-infused dark-chocolate icing? Dream Cakes makes more than 20 varieties of cupcakes, and prepares up to eight different flavors each week. Classic cupcakes run $3.50 each, while specialty flavors are a dollar more. Here's some great news: On Friday, Dream Cakes opens a retail spot at 101 W. Marcy St. Tentative hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. Opening-day flavors include Lemon Crème, Armadillo (red velvet), Mocha Loca, Jabberwocky (chocolate with raspberry-jam filling and raspberry buttercream frosting), Great Pumpkin (pumpkin spice with pumpkin mousse with brown sugar icing) and Eastern Spice (spiced cupcake with nuts and dates and honey/cinnamon/cream cheese icing). On opening day, classic cupcakes will only be $3, and specialty flavors are $3.50. Welcome to the neighborhood, Dream Cakes! You can learn more about Dream Cakes online by visiting http://dreamcakesgourmetcupcakes.blogspot.com or by joining its Facebook page (do a Google search for Dream Cakes, Santa Fe, Facebook).


Back to Dulce bakery for a moment: The new bakery (100 Don Diego Ave., Suite A, 989-9966) is taking advance orders beginning this week for holiday pies (including pecan and pumpkin) prepared with a crust that contains cream cheese. Sounds intriguing! A few special requests for apple pies will be honored, and there's talk of other offerings. Head over to the bakery or call for orders and more information.


Speaking of sweet treats: Congratulations to local confectioner Chuck Higgins, owner/operator of C.G. Higgins Confections (847 Ninita St., 820-1315), for earning a first-place 2011 Scovie Award for Unique Snack for his chile-pecan brittle, and a first-place Scovie Award in the snack-popcorn category for his New Mexico-chile caramel corn. Both products use both red and green chile, and both scored well for having high concentrations of chile flavor without too much punishing heat. Created by chile head and fiery foods expert Dave DeWitt (he's on the board of New Mexico State University's Chile Pepper Institute), The Scovie Awards are given out annually after a blind tasting and honor the best heat-seeking foods on the planet. You can wait and taste Higgins' winning products March 4-6 at the Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show at Albuquerque's Sandia Resort & Casino, or you can head over to his marvelous shop off St. Francis Drive and get a chile fix earlier. For more information on the Scovie Awards, visit www.scovieawards.com. For more information on C.H. Higgins Confections, visit http://www.cghiggins.com/.


For those of you who have developed an addiction to the lamb kofta burgers, gyro sandwiches, baklava and other Mediterranean treats from the Nile Café cart on Cordova Road across from Trader Joe's and are wondering where it's gone, fear not. The business has moved to the inside of the Toney Anaya Building at 2550 Cerrillos Road, just in time for winter. The café's new hours are 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, and the owners have added breakfast burgers, Mediterranean flatbreads and green-chile-topped beef burgers to their already stellar and reasonably priced menu.

Contact Rob DeWalt at rdewalt@sfnewmexican.com. Follow Rob and Taste on Twitter at www.twitter.com/sfnmTASTE.