Before sweet cupcake treats became the central theme of his life, Renato Cautela, owner of Yummy Cupcakes in Encinitas, spent over 25 years as a sales manager in the wine and liquor industry. He spent a lot of time working with chefs doing wine pairings with dishes and developed a passion for savory cooking. Little did he know at the time that he would eventually blossom into a cupcake baker. However, when an opportunity arose for him to open the Encinitas Yummy Cupcakes store, he jumped on it. And I’m so happy he did because he’s been creating the most amazing cupcakes in that location since 2013.

Cautela loves the creative side of life as a sweet chef.  “Baking is a perfect blend of creativity and science. In the savory world, you don’t always have to follow recipes with such accuracy. You can add a dash of something here and not worry about it messing up your dish. But baking is much more precise. You can mess things up pretty easily if you accidentally put in baking soda instead of baking powder,” says Cautela who feels that many of his natural traits, including patience and attention to detail, helped him to embrace the wonderful world of baking.

Yummy Cupcakes offers more than 20 different flavors daily from a portfolio of over 650 recipes including gluten–less, vegan and sugar-free. Yummy Cupcakes caters to all of San Diego County and the space can be reserved for private parties as well.  Groups of up to 12 people can learn to build a parfait and decorate a collection of cupcakes. “We’re not just a cupcake store,” shares Cautela, “we provide diversity and dimension to dessert tables, weddings and holiday parties.”

Visitors to the store can find a variety of delicious cupcake creations including Wedding Cookie, Chocolately Salty Caramel, Pink Vanilla Happy Day, Chocolate Oreo, and much more. In order to serve customers following special diets, Cautela created his own vegan, gluten-less and sugar-free cupcake recipes. “It was a lot of trial and error with the test batches, but I wanted to make sure that we had a cupcake for everybody. So many people in our area are on special diets, and I wanted to be able to serve the unique needs of our market.”

And serve our community, he does, in many delicious ways! Thanks, Renato, for all that you do to make our lives so much sweeter!