Miami, Florida · Mariana Cortez
Bunnie Cakes.
A place at the
birthday table.
A grandmother’s recipe. A mother’s determination. A little pink heart that has quite a lot to say about belonging.
The birthday belongs to the child.
A birthday cake has an absurd amount of responsibility for something that spends the evening on a paper plate.
It holds the candles. It gathers everybody into the same photograph. For a few minutes, it gives the room a center and gives one person the lovely, slightly embarrassing experience of being sung to by people who should probably keep their day jobs.
Adults can forget how much of the occasion lives in that cake. A child is less likely to make that mistake.
Mariana Cortez founded Bunnie Cakes after struggling to find a cake for her son’s second birthday that would accommodate his dietary needs. She began baking at home, and the business followed in 2009. A Downtown Doral account of its beginnings places the first Wynwood storefront in February 2013.
Those four years deserve a little room in the story. Before there was a shop people could walk into, there was a mother working on an answer in her kitchen. Before the company could mean something to Miami, it had to mean something to one family.
What draws me to Bunnie Cakes is the attention behind that answer. Mariana understood that being present at a celebration and getting to participate in it can be two very different experiences. Her work began in the space between them.
That same wish to include everyone at the occasion runs through my essay on helping a whole table choose a plant-based meal. The person choosing the food is often thinking about everyone else before thinking about themselves.
What a family passes down
Her grandmother left room for the mess.
In an interview with SFL Style, Mariana remembers helping her grandmother make vanilla cake. Her job was to add the eggs. Pieces of shell sometimes went into the batter, too. Her grandmother patiently showed her how to remove them.
That recipe became the starting point for Bunnie Cakes’ original batter, with the eggs and dairy replaced and the method adjusted.
I love the patience in that memory. A grown-up can finish a cake much faster without a small assistant. Letting the child help means accepting the interruption, the slower pace, and the possibility that the mixing bowl will require a little excavation.
But the child gets something worth keeping. She gets to feel useful. She learns that a mistake is something they can fix together. Years later, she remembers the person beside the bowl as clearly as the cake.
Family recipes carry those associations. The written instructions may tell us how much flour to use, while the important part survives somewhere else: how we were spoken to, whether we were welcome in the kitchen, whose hands guided ours.
Mariana’s adaptation makes that inheritance available to another generation. There is affection in keeping a recipe. There is also affection in changing it so the person you love can have some.
A recipe can change
and still keep
its promise.
The smallest signature
That little pink heart takes somebody’s time.
Bunnie Cakes became recognizable for the small hearts on its cakes and cupcakes. In a 2016 interview with The Reporter at Miami Dade College, Mariana described cutting the pink hearts individually, every day.
That is the sort of detail I tend to stop at.
A heart is easy to draw in a branding presentation. Cutting one, then another, then another is a decision about how people will spend their working day. Someone has to keep caring about the little thing after the little thing becomes familiar.
We notice those choices in other places, too. The person who straightens a table before guests arrive. The baker who adjusts the final decoration before closing the box. Much of hospitality happens before anybody is there to thank you for it.
The pink heart gives that work a visible signature. It is small enough to belong to an individual cupcake, which matters. The person receiving it gets a complete little celebration of their own.
I find that especially fitting for a company that began by paying attention to one child. The scale may change, but the unit of care is still a person.
The ambition behind the sweetness
She could already see them on the shelf.
“My cupcakes will be here someday.”
Mariana Cortez, recalling her Whole Foods visits in Miami New Times, 2016
When Bunnie Cakes reached Miami-area Whole Foods stores in 2016, Mariana told Miami New Times she had been pursuing that goal for four years. She remembered visiting the bakery department as a shopper and imagining her cupcakes there. When someone sent her a photograph of them on the shelves, she cried.
I admire the distance between those two pictures: the one she carried in her head and the one someone finally sent her.
A business can look inevitable once it is established. We see the packaging, the familiar name, the place on the shelf. The years when the founder could see something that had not happened yet are harder to photograph.
There is real ambition here, and it deserves to be taken seriously. A sweet, colorful business still requires production, persistence, and the ability to deliver. Affection for the founding story gets a company only so far. Somebody has to do the work that allows more people to encounter it.
For a business born from an unanswered need, wider availability has a particular significance. It puts the answer within reach of families the founder will never meet.
- 2009A family kitchen
The business begins with Mariana’s baking at home.
- 2013A door in Wynwood
The first storefront opens in February.
- 2016A long-imagined shelf
Miami New Times reports the arrival at Miami-area Whole Foods stores.
A founder’s imagination
Joy deserves an artist.
Mariana’s interest in making things extends beyond baking. Ascendus, which supported the business, describes her childhood love of drawing and painting, and cakes decorated with artwork including a likeness of Frida Kahlo. Its profile also describes her children joining a baking camp and one daughter helping with a workshop.
Those details belong together. Here is a person making room for creative pleasure, both in the finished object and in the making of it.
A beautifully decorated cake asks us to pause before we cut it. For a moment, everybody looks. Someone points out a detail. Somebody takes a picture. The care that went into the object becomes part of the attention given to the occasion.
That is a useful contribution to a birthday. It says the day warranted some imagination.
And when a child gets to do the decorating, the value changes again. The frosting may lean. The sprinkles may become a structural component. The child has made something to give, and that pride can be the best thing on the table.
A birthday still needed to feel like a birthday.
In April 2020, Bunnie Cakes announced at-home cookie-making and cupcake-decorating kits. Its announcement focused on helping families continue to mark birthdays during quarantine. The kits included tools and decorations that gave people something to do together.
The decision makes sense to me at the level of an ordinary household. When familiar plans disappear, a small ritual can give the day some shape. There is a reason to clear the table. There is a task for the child who wants to help. There is something to bring out when it is time to sing.
Children measure a birthday in the details adults arrange around it. The decorations, the candles, the fuss. Even a modest celebration can say, very clearly, that this particular person matters.
Helping a family make that happen is meaningful work. Bunnie Cakes had already been built around the importance of participation. Here was another way to put that understanding to use.
The next kitchen
Letting another family
do the making.
Bunnie Cakes’ ready-to-bake line brings prepared cupcake batter and frosting into the home kitchen. In her 2026 interview with Authority Magazine, Mariana describes wanting to make baking easier while preserving the experience of making and sharing something at home.
That direction gives the company’s story a lovely turn. A business that began in a family kitchen now leaves part of the experience for another family to finish.
I think we sometimes underestimate the pleasure of being involved. Being handed something beautiful is wonderful. Having a small part in making it offers a different satisfaction. You chose the occasion. You made room on the counter. You decided who would get the first one.
The useful thing about convenience is what it leaves us time and energy to do. A parent with a crowded afternoon might still want a few minutes in the kitchen with a child. Those minutes count even if somebody else has already handled the measuring.
No family memory has ever been improved by an audit of who sifted the flour.
There is room for skill and help in the same kitchen. There is room for pride in something you finished, decorated, and shared. I like a business that can contribute to the occasion without needing to be the center of it.
From one kitchen to another
The company provides part of the work.
The family gets to make the memory.
Why I admire Bunnie Cakes
A bigger circle around the table.
The company’s own account of its purpose continues to place inclusion and shared occasions at the center. Looking across the story, I can see why that idea has endured. It is specific enough to begin with one child and generous enough to keep finding new expressions.
A grandmother welcomes a young helper. That helper grows up and works out how to bake for her son. A shop gives other families somewhere to turn. A small heart carries the maker’s attention into the box. Later, another household gets to take part in the making.
Each chapter opens the circle a little wider.
When I write about a company I admire, this is the kind of contribution I am looking for. What does its existence make possible in somebody’s day? What does the person behind it notice? What becomes easier, warmer, or more memorable because they cared enough to act?
Mariana noticed something a parent would recognize immediately: the child at the birthday table should get to enjoy the birthday.
She kept baking until more people could.
Rob Urban
A few questions about the story
Bunnie Cakes,
in context.
The people, the beginnings, and the idea behind the business.
Who founded Bunnie Cakes?
Mariana Cortez founded Bunnie Cakes in Miami in 2009. She began baking at home after struggling to find a birthday cake that accommodated her son’s dietary needs.
When did the first Bunnie Cakes storefront open?
The business began in 2009, and its first Wynwood storefront opened in February 2013. The home-kitchen beginnings and the shop opening are separate milestones.
What inspired Bunnie Cakes’ original recipe?
Mariana drew on her grandmother’s vanilla cake recipe, replacing eggs and dairy and adjusting the method. She has described learning to bake beside her grandmother as a child.
What makes Bunnie Cakes’ story distinctive?
Its beginnings connect family baking traditions with a mother’s determination to include her son in a celebration. The company’s small pink hearts, creative decoration, and opportunities to bake at home give that founding idea different forms.
How does home baking fit into the Bunnie Cakes story?
Bunnie Cakes began in Mariana’s home kitchen. Its later decorating kits and ready-to-bake products invite other families to take part in making something together, extending the story beyond a finished cake or a storefront.