The Yellow Leaf Cupcake Company sprouts up in Belltown

Mike Hein and Tony Portugal, co-owners of Belltown's new The Yellow Leaf Cupcake Company, think that "the world is a better place with cupcakes." To wit, they're serving up cupcakes ($2.95) in more than 60 inventive flavors including French Toast and Mexican Chocolate, along with a wide selection of loose leaf tea and French press coffee.

Though he never baked professionally, Portugal dreamt of doing so while he grew up baking with his family on the Texas-Mexico border. Drawing on favorite childhood recipes, Portugal incorporated Mexican caramel flavors in the Dulce De Leche cupcake and drew inspiration from the Depression-era spice cakes that were a staple of Hein's youth to create Yellow Leaf's popular Tomato Soup Cupcake (think pumpkin pie meets carrot cake).

Portugal and Hein are passionate about pushing the limits of flavor and each day they bake fresh cupcakes in complex flavors like Chocolate Joy, Boston Crème and Crème Brulee. They love taste-testing new cupcake concepts with their clients and appreciate feedback and requests.  "There's no reason that cupcakes should be so limited. They need not to be taken so seriously. They need to be ridiculous," Hein laughs. 

Unlike most cupcakes, which are topped with American buttercream frosting, Yellow Leaf cupcakes are made with Italian buttercream, a light, soft frosting that's less sweet than its U.S. counterpart. Hein and Portugal chose the Italian recipe to ensure their cupcakes were sophisticated from beginning to end. Hein says that his Belltown clientele are mature professionals who can have fun with, say, a Neapolitan cupcake, but don't want it to be fussy: overly pink or drowned in sprinkles.

Aiming to create a space that speaks to their sophisticated desserts, Hein and Portugal designed a calming, masculine retail location with a chocolate brown ceiling, slate floors and cork accents. If you want to sit in one of their red leather chairs and enjoy your cupcake, you can pair it with a French press coffee ($1.95), Dry Soda, or a selection of more than 25 loose leaf teas ($2.25) including Miro tea from Ballard. If you're grabbing cupcakes to go, you can also pick up bags of whole bean coffee, Art of Tea offerings ($2.25-$2.75 an ounce) , retail selections from Seattle's own Choice teas ($2.25-$2.75 an ounce), or a coffee or tea accessory.

Call 48 hours in advance to order more than a dozen cupcakes for your event, and make sure you include some Yellow Heart cupcakes in your large order. Hein and Portugal feature a different "Yellow Heart" cupcake each month and, for each one sold, they donate a dollar to that month's featured charity. "At the end of the day it's about giving back to our community," Hein says of the program, which has already benefitted the Children's Hospital of Seattle and the Fallen Soldiers Fund.

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