Photo by Jeffrey Saulton Becky Kidder, co-owner of Crazy Cake Cafe, puts the finishing touch on a cupcake at the Crazy Cake Cafe in Vienna.

VIENNA — Having a bakery making cakes the way the customer wants them is the goal of the newest business along Grand Central Avenue.

In September the mother-daughter team of Becky Kidder and Amy Hanlon opened the Crazy Cake Cafe in the Grandland Plaza in the former location of Eyes on Grand Central.

“Our primary offering is you can come in and, as we explain it to customers, think of Subway sandwich shop; you pick your bread, pick your meat and veggies and they build you a sandwich,” Kidder said. “You come in here and pick your cake flavor, pick your frosting and then any of our toppings and frosting you like and we will build your individual cake.”

Kidder said the cake or cupcakes can be eaten at the shop or taken home.

“We have coffee, tea and cold drinks and then we have a kids snack combo which is a small cake, about the size of the top of a cupcake in any flavor or frosting with a drink,” she said. “We make cakes and cupcakes and by advance order we make cakes, cupcakes and cookies.”

Photo by Jeffrey Saulton Crazy Cake Cafe is located in the Grandland Plaza in Vienna and is open from noon to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. Sunday.

At Crazy Cakes Cafe the traditional bakery model does not apply.

“We are not a traditional bakery where there are a lot of things already made at the discretion of the baker,” she said.

Sometimes, she said, they may have a few items pre-baked, but not often.

“Sometimes we may have an order and the recipe makes more than we need and we’ll have them out, but that’s not common,” she said.

Kidder said the idea came out of a discussion with her daughter after a visit to a Cheesecake Factory in Columbus.

“As we were trying to decide what cheesecake to get, we’d look and say ‘I like that bottom but I’d like to put that topping on it,'” she said. “We thought they need to make them so you can make what you want and put it together like the frozen yogurt places where you can pick your own toppings, but with cheesecake.”

Kidder said the idea stuck in her head and then she began to think it could be done with any kind of cake, not just cheesecake.

Many first time customers think they are walking into a cupcake shop, she said.

“Just from what they’ve heard that’s the only thing they can associate it with,” she said. “It is unique, they do not anticipate what it is.

“Once we explain it to people, generally their reaction is ‘this is so cool, I can have the cake anyway I want it — this is better than a cupcake.”

Kidder said they get some odd combinations.

“This is a no judgment zone,” she said. “We have parents who say to their children you can’t put that together on a cake, and we say you can have it however you want it.”

Kidder said there is no upcharge for more than one topping.

“We only have so many square inches on the top of the cake so it is self-limiting portion control,” she said. “We don’t limit people, you can have as many of those toppings and things as you like. There can be two different flavors of cake for each layer, a different frosting in the middle and another on top, you can have what you want.”

Once she had the idea, Kidder said it all came together quickly.

“I did some research and found cupcakes are waning but specialty niche bakeries are projected to be on the rise,” she said. “I linked over to a Web site that graphic designers put their designs out  and this one for Crazy Cake Cafe just popped up. I just liked it, it just fit this idea I had to kind of go crazy and have the cake the way you want it.”

Kidder said she also researched cake recipes for cakes that are called crazy cakes.

“It is a recipe from the Depression era when certain things were scarce and they are egg and dairy free,” she said. “Which in today’s vernacular means vegan.”

Kidder said there are two mainstay flavors and the others change weekly; she has gluten-free and sugar-free or low calorie flavors as well and they change each week.

“We have chocolate and vanilla every week; this week the other three are key lime, butter pecan and Dr. Pepper cake,” she said. “Our gluten-free is vanilla chocolate chip and out low calorie is a pumpkin angel food. Our frosting are gluten-free since they are made with gluten-free powdered sugar.”

Kidder said baking for gluten-free was a challenge for her.

“What I heard from people who do bake and what I have read, it is hard to get them to rise and they are typically drier,” she said. “We used an actual gluten – free recipe the first week and it was OK — but the next week I thought why not swap out the flour in our crazy cake and see what happens.”

“We swapped one to one in our crazy cake recipe and they rise really, really nice and they are not dry,” she said. “We’ve had quite a few customers come in because they are hearing about the gluten-free cake.”

Kidder, a nurse, decided to get into a new field as a baker and business owner.

“We think have hit on something unique, something that because people are interactive with it are engaged,” she said. “Feedback has been super, super positive and has all the elements to be frachiseable. That is our big picture goal in life, to create a product that can be franchise.

Kidder said she has a location in mind for a second location.

The Mid-Ohio Valley Chamber of Commerce will hold a ribbon cutting at the store at 11:15 a.m. Thursday. An open house will be held 11 a.m. to noon Thursday.