Jilly's Debuts New Menu Items and Big News at Its Adults-Only Cocktail Reception

Ettie Berneking

​Jilly's Cupcake Bar had reason to celebrate Thursday night, despite the cold, slushy weather. While the streets were frosted with fluffy precipitation, Jilly's cupcake chefs dropped dollops of buttercream icing on tray after tray of the bakery's famous jumbo cupcakes in preparation for the night's "adults only" cocktail reception.

As guests toured the 4,100-square-foot café -- 1,400 newly squared feet were added in a build-out late last year, if you're keeping score at home -- they were able to enjoy more than cupcakes (and plates full of crab and coconut fritters, chicken roulade and lobster rolls): Cocktails made their debut on Jilly's menu.

That's right -- the bar is now truly a bar.

Jilly's made its first appearance on the Food Network's reality cooking show, Cupcake Wars, last year, showing off the flair chefs Dana Holland and Casey Shiller bring to their cupcakes. At last night's event, Shiller announced that Jilly's will return for another season, in which they'll take part in a competition among other previous Wars winners.

Ettie Berneking

​The cupcake-chef tag team also announced that a second location of the cupcake shop -- in the Colonnade Center shopping plaza (on the south side of Manchester Road a block east of West County Center in Des Peres) -- will open January 20.

The new store will be geared mostly toward to-go items, but like the Delmar Jilly's, the Des Peres model will showcase brisket. In fact, a "Brisket Bar" will offer made-to-order brisket sandwiches with more than 30 toppings to choose from.

Thursday's event featured a brisket station, as well as tubs of margaritas and a selection of Fat Tire and O'Fallon Brewery beers.

"We like to consider ourselves the Five Guys of brisket," Shiller quipped.

Guests piled plates full of appetizers and brisket while pulling from the cupcake pyramid, which offered miniature cakes decorated in the night's theme: go-go dancing. Two dancers from Belly Dance Mirage, outfitted in white knee-high go-go boots and red-sequinned bras, posed for photos with guests as the Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA" poured forth from the sound system overhead.

For more scenes from the event, check out Ettie Berneking's slideshow.