Kute N' The Kitchen chef talks viral savory cupakes

Welcome back. A Long Beach mom is building community through her home kitchen and her food has reviewers going the extra mile. I just drove an hour and a half to get some cornbread savory cupcakes. I'm obsessed with anything cornbread. Tell me about it though real quick because I don't even know how I came up with it. On the bottom it's going to be a honey butter cornbread that I make with garlic mashed potatoes on top and then the short rib and then the carrots. I cook them for like two three hours. They're candy. Oh my god. Since I started doing reviews this might be in my top five favorite things that I've eaten. I have no words, I'm speechless. Camila Abdurahim started with home cooking and a plan for pop-ups. And now her food is bringing people together for monthly brunches and soul food Sundays. But it is her savory cupcakes that are blowing up online with cornbread, garlic mashed potatoes, brisket and candied carrots. The chef behind Cute in the Kitchen joins us with a taste this morning. Camila, welcome. Hi, welcome. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here, you guys. guys. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to have you here. Listen, can you just let people get to know you a little bit? Because you have a really, I think, powerful story. You went through a lot right before and during the pandemic, right? I did. Talk to us about that. So right before the pandemic, I did lose my daughter's father. And we were together for over 12 years. And it was kind of like what I did every day. It was family. So when I did lose him, I kind of was lost and didn't know what to do. So I cooked all the time for my family. There's 13 of us. And we always are eating. We have had a lot of siblings. Yeah. And we just go ahead and cook and have fun. So my brothers and my sisters were like, you need to sell plates. Didn't you lose your job? I did. During the COVID, I lost my job. First, they cut our hours 25. I was an accountant. I was an accountant for JVC Kenwood. And they cut our hours at first to like 30, then 25. And we were still working in office. Then they sent us home and I was at 15 hours a week. So you were trying to figure out like what can i do to survive what can i do to survive i have three girls my youngest daughter's father died and so you know it took a while for me to find my way to figure out what i was going to do but then i just you know my brothers they pushed me my sister pushed me and i started selling these plates and then it kind of came into like a little event type thing my friends were coming because we always used to have dinners at our house and then eventually my brother's like you need to make money you need to make money they need to you know you so people just start coming yeah so you just thought you know what well i can cook yeah i can cook and it's the trade learn how to cook my mother and my grandmother i always call these grandma's hands because my every time i cook i visualize my grandmother in the kitchen and me and my mom in there with her and my mom always had me in the kitchen so was this an evolution like it came to these cup like the cupcakes like uh how did you come up with that idea so i cater anyways so i do catering services you know holiday dinners things like that but the cupcake is something because i don't really like sweets can we eat yes so i don't really like sweets so i came up with something that savory cupcake that i would like and i gave it to my family they liked it and then they were like okay let's do it but it's a great idea because these are even for like events or parties thanksgiving christmas baby showers they're getting ordered valentine's day like you know everything they go with everything so what's in this one so this one that you're eating normally i do short rib brisket or oxtail this one's brisket so it's going to be a cornbread cupcake with the mashed potatoes the cheese and then you'll have the brisket and the candy carrot the slow-cooked two-hour candy carrot that everybody's talking about and topped with the sauce that's kind of mixed with like the meat sauce and the candy carrots it's like a home meal in one this is very good it's like your sunday dinner in three bites yes the top part is so good the flavors all melt together and um just the right like spiciness yeah salty yeah all together at what point did you did you did your stuff become super viral where everybody was going like uh and you were getting these giant lines outside Believe it or not, these cupcakes came out like four years ago, and I wasn't really into Instagram, so I guess they didn't go viral. So then we brought them back again and tried it again, and they went viral. I clicked up with these two reviewers, along with Carrie and along with Spooky Foodie. So we had Yalta Jacques, I'm sorry, I always pronounce his name wrong, and Yalta Noah. And then we had Spooky Foodie, and then we had Carrie. those three people brought a line out of my door wow like i i came out to the brunch and saw the street oh my god and i had a panic attack like do i have enough food for you did you have enough food for all these people no we had to buy more and then we still sold out that's great what does that feel like you know it feels great because you know i sometimes struggle with believing in myself and this right here was a chance for me to start to believe in myself and know that what i can do and once you see everybody else believing in you too because i came out like you guys are here for me i was shocked like you know really proud uh-huh can i just say he doesn't eat at work like the fact that he doesn't the fact that he's tearing that up right he's very structured about what he eats like very healthy so are you i love it for you he is tearing look How are you tearing it up? It's the topping. It's the meat. Slow cooked. The combination. Hours. There you go. The mashed potato with cheese. And brisket. Brisket all together. Candy carrying. It's like Sunday dinner. That's a compliment. Sunday pot roast dinner in one bite. Nice. Or two or three. The topping. Some people just shove it in. So what's next? You're expanding your menu. So I have a huge menu, but this is right now what's feeding the family, along with the pop-ups and um along with catering since the food reviewers love me the catering is blowing up you know especially during the holidays thanksgiving and christmas i'll get the orders in now but what kind of ordering like all I saw myself who cooks comfort cooking so that's basically what i do here's the menu that we need to see okay what's the cutoff date for orders so the cutoff date is the week before thanksgiving okay so tell us about this thanksgiving menu what's different about this well i always take soul food to another level so like my greens are not regular greens my greens have like so i don't cook with pork at all i don't use pork any pork products anything with that has to do with lard or pork and so um i take it to another level so if i do yams i'm probably going to put some Hennessy in there oh you know some pecans if i do a roast i'm going to probably make it slow roasted like i do putting Hennessy in the greens green yes and then the greens i normally put like um turkey sausage turkey kielbasa ground turkey and then i put turkey tails so this like really meaty it's like kind of like a gumbo green but without seafood deep flavor deep flavor mommy just like your grandma used to make so good and so this is really good i'm like he was tearing that up look at mine and tell us about the pop-ups so the pop-ups are my favorite thing to do um i cultivate dinner and brunch once a month so every two weeks there'll be a brunch and every two weeks there'll be a soul food dinner and what i do is i have my favorite vendors that i go patronize i pull up and get their food too and then i have vendors that are like most craved by my crowd and i let them use my platform to build their platform I love it. Paying it forward. Definitely paying it forward. I'm all about that. And I feel like I'm going to put you in front of some people that you might not have ever met or who might not be on your radar or something like that. So when they come, they get to meet Daisy. They get to meet Lady Hymn. We did something with Humble Zay. I did his last dinner in California. Wait, so how can people get to these dinners? That's true, yeah. How can people get a ticket? Do we have to be invited? So you don't need a ticket. You don't have to be invited. I always post on my story and I always post on my page. I'll post the menu you can preorder so you don't have to wait for the line you can just come get your food and we're actually having one next Sunday okay it'll be soulful Sunday soulful Sunday okay Camila thank you so much for being here thank you for this this is delicious find her on social media at cute in the kitchen and you can see it down there on your screen cute is spelled with a k cute in the kitchen for orders upcoming events the savory cupcakes require at least one day's notice 24 hours direct message her to order those get get you a dozen and also Also, make sure that you guys hit me up for the holiday cupcake. I also bought you guys samples of those. That one has turkey, right? Cranberry. That one is the turkey, the cranberry, the mashed potato, the candy carry. It is yummy and it was also suggested by Bethany on me and Carrie's post. And I did it. Did you bring the oxtail? I did not. Well, look at him over there trying to- But that just means you need to come to Soul Food Sunday and get the oxtail. Thank you, Camila. Thank you so much for having me. I gotta finish mine.