Today’s Special: Tisha Hudson’s Strawberry Shortcake Cheesecake Cupcake

Behold the Edible Couture strawberry shortcake cheesecake cupcake.

The strawberry crumble festive with summer. The frolicking dollop of cream cheese frosting. The luscious strawberry slice on top. It’s positively gleeful.

“This is the frosting that everybody loves,” said Edible Couture owner Tisha Hudson, over the whir of the electric mixer at her Court Street shop. ​“Just butter, sugar, cream cheese, basic recipe but I like to tweak it so it doesn’t taste like traditional cream cheese.”

Hudson, 48, grew up in Bridgeport. Her mother gave her free range of the kitchen. ​“I used to make Beef Wellington,” she said. ​“I learned that from Julia Child.”

She cooked for her older sister and brother, for the neighborhood kids. ​“Even as a kid, they used to call me ​‘Mama T’ because I acted as if I was everybody’s mother,” she said. ​“It was ​‘I’ll cook for you. I’ll take care of you.’”

Her grandmother honed her baking chops. ​“She taught me we don’t measure. It’s just eyesight, taste, until we get it the way we want it.” 

When Hudson wasn’t cooking and baking, she would take the bus downtown to the library. 

“I’d just sit there for hours reading all kinds of interior design, money management, all kinds of books,” she said, sliding the tray of cupcakes from the oven onto a cooling rack, the aroma of fresh baking wafting through the brightly lit space. 

“Living in such a rough town, you want to find a way out, so that was my whole thing.”

As she spoke, Hudson checked the red velvet cupcakes, then the individual pans of peach cobbler. She’d been baking in the kitchen since 7 a.m. It was 8:30. Her husband Darnell would be coming by with the Edible Couture food truck later that morning to pick up the baked goods for sale at their regular spot on 3180 Main St. in Bridgeport. Her New Haven shop would open at 11. 

“I make my own homemade crust,” Hudson said. ​“Some people buy pie crust but I don’t like that because I like a lot of crust, and the crust here sucks up some of the peach juice, but it still stays nice and crusty.” 

“People go crazy for the peach cobbler,” she said. ​“They say it reminds them of their grandmother’s. I hear that a lot.” 

That’s all right with her. ​“When people eat my desserts, I want them to feel rewarded, like they’re getting a little piece of heaven,” she said. ​“I want them to think this is the way a cupcake should be.” 

By then, the cupcakes had cooled. She set the tray on the counter. 

“My whole life, I’ve been a go-getter,” she said, as she cored holes in the center of each cupcake. 

At 13, she was selling talking balloons. From there, she said, ​“it was everything from Avon to lingerie to owning my own furniture company, event company, gift basket company, everything.” 

For each new enterprise, ​“I just read a lot of books, watched a lot of videos, and worked until I mastered it.” 

Then, in 2011, came a dream about her father. 

“He died in 2009, and he struggled with addiction, and when people struggle with that they don’t really want to be seen,” she said. 

In the dream, her father came through her bedroom door. ​“He gave me a hug and he said, ​‘I can’t stay, but I want you to go to my old apartment and find that book behind the TV,’ and it was a book of recipes,” she said.

From her cousin, she learned that her father used the book when he worked at a bakery years before.

“I felt like my father came back to give me something that he was never able to give me when he was alive,” she said. ​“That was when I realized I’ve had this passion for baking since I was a kid.”

Not long after, she issued a post on Facebook. ​“It said, ​‘I make cupcakes,’” she recalled. “‘If anybody wants one, you can come get it,’ and that was when I created the banana pudding cupcake.”

They came and got it. She kept baking out of her Stratford home while working at The Pension Service in North Haven. ​“It was just a hobby,” she said. But they kept coming. The passion grew.

“Early on, I used to record people’s reactions,” she said, piping the holes of the cupcakes with homemade whipped cream. ​“They were like ​‘how did you do this?’ ​‘This is what a cupcake should be.’” 

She had cupcakes shipped to her from New Orleans, from Brooklyn, from Manhattan. ​“Just to see how it stood up to mine,” she said. On vacation, she and her family — she and Darnell have six kids — would sample cupcakes from all the top bakeries, and compare. 

Then, one day in 2018, Hudson said, ​“I woke up and I said I’m going to buy a food truck.” She found someone in North Haven who sold them. ​“I asked him a million questions, and then I bought a truck from him.” In short order, she created a logo, got the truck painted hot pink with images of mouthwatering cake cups, and built a website. 

At the time, she was still working at the Pension Service. She told them she would go part-time. ​“They were very supportive,” she said. ​“They encouraged me to pursue my dreams.” 

Then came the first day. She sold out. The next day she sold out again. 

“I love it,” she said, as she frosted each cupcake. ​“I love being on the truck more than anything. I’ve always been a shy person, but being in front of people, seeing their reactions to my food, you can’t beat that.” She quit her job. They still order cupcakes from her. 

In August 2020, she decided to lease the space on Court Street with Poreyah Benton, owner of Vegan Ahava, which specialized in vegan fare. Benton’s business lasted six months in that location; there wasn’t enough space for cooking. 

Meanwhile, Hudson’s client list grew. ​“Yale has been a big supporter, every department, they come from everywhere,” she said. For this year’s Juneteenth celebration, Amazon headquarters in North Haven hired her to pass out cupcakes and cake jars to their employees. 

Last November came a call from the ​“Today Show” to appear on a Small Business Saturday segment. 

“I was so nervous but then when it was time to go live, I knew I had to promote my business, because this might be a one-in-a-lifetime thing, and I did,” she recalled.

While she was talking about her business, her phone kept buzzing in her pocket.

“I’m thinking it’s people telling me they’re seeing me on TV,” she said, as she rolled a cupcake in the strawberry crumble. ​“When I opened up my phone, it was orders like crazy, about a hundred orders or more.” 

Hudson said she particularly enjoys encouraging women to pursue their dreams. 

“They say, ​‘Do you mind if I ask you questions?’ And I’m like, ​‘Of course. Just don’t ask me about my recipe, but anything else, I got you,” she said, before squiggling a cupcake with cream cheese frosting and topping it with a strawberry slice.

“It’s like the little girl in me can say, ​‘Hey, look, we did it, and we’re still going,” she said with some wonder. ​“This was a childhood dream and it happened. It really happened.”