Still not convinced?
About digging into a cupcake with a craft beer, we mean.
“Hey, all you need to do is come downtown on Saturday,” Anna Carrier said. “You’ll love it.”
Carrier is referring to the WV Cupcake and Craft Beer Fest, which runs from noon-6 p.m. that day at Courthouse Square and lower High Street, in downtown Morgantown.
She’s the owner of The Cupcakerie Café and Frosé on Collins Ferry Road, the establishment that annually sponsors the event, which pairs the cupcake creations with the beer concoctions — all for a worthy cause.
This year’s event, which is in partnership with Main Street Morgantown, is raising money for the Walk to End Alzheimer’s, which is a key fundraiser for the national Alzheimer’s Association.
Janet Nelson Williams, The Cupcakerie founder who recently retired from the business but is still helping organize the festival, has plenty to say about that.
First, though, the sweet proceedings of the day to come.
Beer-makers from across West Virginia and the region will offer up samples of the best of their craft brews, along with an array of ciders and the aforementioned frosé, which is a partially frozen blend of rosé wine and fruit.
Which, of course, is where the famous offerings from The Cupcakerie come in.
Icing matches the flavor notes of the beer, which in turn, hearkens to the filling therein the cupcake — which, incidentally, first started appearing in American Colonial kitchens in 1796, according to the sweet lore.
As per festival tradition, The Cupcakerie is rolling out custom creations just for the day, including lemon shandy and chocolate stout, Carrier said.
Don’t forget to try the Strawberry Rosé cupcake, she adds — “We’re especially excited about that one.”
Visit cupcakecraftbeer.com for more details.
Meanwhile, both she and Williams are excited about this year’s new location downtown, she said.
“Courthouse Square is always great for concerts,” Williams said, “and downtown is just so authentic for an event like this.”
Bluegrass bands are on the bill, Carrier said, and there’s also that epicenter of commerce and authenticity that comes from that new location, she said, echoing Williams.
“You can enjoy a great festival while seeing what all our great businesses downtown also have to offer,” she said.
Sweet memories
The festival, as said, benefits Walk to End Alzheimer’s, a key fundraiser in the fight against the dreaded disease that deletes memories and erases lives.
One person every 67 seconds in America, and elsewhere, according to numbers culled from the national Alzheimer’s Association, is hit with the onset of the disease and the cruel shadows it can cast.
Your mom.
Your husband or your wife.
Your big sister, your little brother, your saintly grandmother and that witty cousin you loved to hang out with at the family reunion.
Your dad.
Williams lost her father to Alzheimer’s complications in 2007, she said.
John Nelson grew up in an orphanage in Randolph County and he answered the call of his country in World War II.
The kid from the hills who didn’t have a mom or dad survived the horror and chaos of Normandy Beach on D-Day, while seeing heavy combat all across Europe.
Nelson was a young-old man when he came back to West Virginia at war’s end.
He became a success in business — and, his daughter said, Nelson was even more successful as a family man.
“My dad was a hero in war,” she said.
“He was definitely my hero at home. And it was just so sad, watching him fade away.”
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