Kopcakes

Ed said he decided to try his hand at baking cupcakes after having a craving, and he has not stopped experimenting since.

"I had never baked other than the pie, and I started thinking, 'What happens if I make this coconut cream pie filling inside the cupcakes?' And that's how this whole thing got started," he said.

Over the next few years, Ed began baking as a full-time hobby, creating a variety of flavor combinations using his family's cake recipes.

"[The recipes] come from a variety of places," he said, adding that some flavors have come from customer requests. "It might take me a few tries, but I'll try it. Your imagination is your only limitation, basically. If you can think of it, you can make it happen and put it in the form of a cupcake."

He used his fellow officers as taste testers as he built a menu of Kopcake options.

"I just experimented around and got it the way I liked it, and that's how all these 62 flavors came about," he said. "There's no telling what I'm going to think of. It's fun. To me it's very relaxing, so that's why I do it."

Once he made the decision to open a business, the shop's theme seemed like a natural choice, he said.

"This is my whole thing—it's all about the kids," Ed said. "When the kids come in, you try to bridge that gap between the youngsters and the cops. That's what it is about, to bring people closer together, and if you can do that through cupcakes, that's what we are going to do."

Most days Ed operates the shop on his own, baking orders and cupcakes for the day and running the counter, but on busy days, he brings in his brother John to help out.

"Where else can you go to work and have fun?" John said. "[I really] enjoy the people."

Ed said he may expand the shop's offerings in the future to include pies and possibly coffee and tea, but for now he wants to focus on having fun and making good cupcakes.

"I might start getting into that," he said. "Right now I'm just concentrating on cupcakes, but every year I want to add one thing different to the menu. I might start doing pies, or I might start doing fried pies, but right now I'm sticking with cupcakes because that's what I like to do."

Kopcake flavors

Kopcakes owner Ed Anderson said a little bit of imagination goes a long way when he is coming up with new Kopcake recipes.

The cupcakery features a wide variety of flavors—most made with some kind of filling—from the traditional chocolate and vanilla cakes to peanut butter and jelly.

"I can probably count on one hand the number of cupcakes we have without filling," he said.

Some other Kopcake creations Ed has invented include the strawberry jelly donut cupcake, the cinnamon roll cupcake and the Tailgater, which features bacon, beer and cheddar cheese in the recipe.

Kopcakes, 4410 Williams Drive, Ste. 104, 512-630-3035, www.kopcakes.com, Hours: Wed.–Sat. 9 a.m.–5 p.m.