Fifteen years in, the Great St. Pete Cupcake Contest still can't keep its cupcakes in stock. The competition returns to the Morean Center for Clay in St. Petersburg on Saturday, running from noon until 3 p.m., and the 12-count sample boxes that let attendees taste and vote have a habit of selling out before the doors even open for the day.
According to Creative Loafing Tampa, those boxes run between $20 and $25 and must be reserved ahead of time, a pattern that has held every year the contest has run. The event is held at the Morean Center for Clay, located at 420 22nd Street South, and welcomes bakers across four brackets: youth/teen, novice, professional, and specialty, the last of which covers gluten-free and vegan entries. Reporter Ray Roa notes that attendees who snag a box get to sample the entries and cast a vote for the People's Choice winner, with results announced at 3 p.m.
Four Divisions, One Glass Trophy
Entering costs $15 per flavor per baker, according to Visit St. Pete/Clearwater, with the four-bracket format designed to let home bakers and working pastry professionals compete on separate footing rather than against each other. A panel of culinary guest judges evaluates entries in each division on three criteria: flavor originality, overall taste and texture, and the artistic presentation of each baker's table display, per the same tourism bureau's listing.
The prize tying it all together is distinctly local. Category winners across the competition receive a custom hand-blown glass cupcake trophy, made by artists at the Morean Glass Studio, according to Weird, Wacky & Wild. It's a fitting twist for an event hosted inside an arts nonprofit's ceramics wing rather than a standard catering hall, and it links the contest's culinary side directly to the glassblowing studio that shares the Morean Arts Center's campus.
A Century-Old Arts Nonprofit Behind the Cupcakes
The venue itself carries its own backstory. The Morean Center for Clay occupies a renovated 1926 railway freight depot originally built for the Tampa and Gulf Railroad along what is now the Pinellas Trail, according to a historical account from raddoc1947. The building served as one of South St. Petersburg's largest employers until it was decommissioned in 1967, long before it became an arts complex housing more than 50 resident artist studios and a large-scale kiln operation that Visit St. Pete/Clearwater's profile describes as the largest pottery studio facility in the Southeast United States.
The Morean Arts Center's roots stretch back even further, to 1917, when mother-daughter duo Margaret Tadd and Edith Tadd Little founded the Art Club of St. Petersburg as the west coast of Florida's first art organization, according to the Morean Arts Center. The organization took its current name in 2005 after a $10 million pledge from philanthropist Beth Morean, a gift that let it expand its Central Avenue footprint and open the dedicated Center for Clay in 2009, as the Tampa Bay Times has reported.
Expansion Plans and New Neighbors
The nonprofit is now eyeing an even bigger footprint. In September 2024, Pinellas County commissioners advanced a $15.2 million tourist development tax grant request to support a proposed $30 million replacement facility for the Morean Arts Center in downtown St. Petersburg, per the St Pete Catalyst — a five-story building that would fold the downtown arts center and the Chihuly Collection under one roof. Hoodline has previously reported that same funding request came up amid broader worries over rising studio rents facing St. Petersburg artists.
Closer to cupcake day, the host venue itself picked up a new amenity earlier this year. In March, an arts-focused wine bar and tasting room called Delicious opened inside the Morean Center for Clay, featuring ceramic artwork from in-house artists and evening programming, a move Hoodline covered in detail when it opened inside the Morean Center.
A Launching Pad for Local Bakers
Beyond the glass trophies and gallery pedigree, the contest has quietly functioned as a small-business incubator. Past People's Choice winners have leveraged their exposure at the event to launch local catering and bakery businesses, according to LocalShops1, giving cottage food operators a direct line to hundreds of attendees they might not otherwise reach. For a nonprofit built on a century of visual arts programming, the cupcake contest remains one of its most tangible bridges between St. Petersburg's culinary scene and its arts institutions — assuming, as always, that the boxes last long enough for latecomers to get a taste.
