In case you haven’t heard, we have a national champion among us, and you can stop by nearly any time to see for yourself why she made it to the top of her game in such a short time.
Diane Grimes won this year’s Cake Pop Championship at the national What’s Popping Conference in Kent, Ohio, taking home the Grand Prize over dozens of competitors from across the country. The theme for the contest was Cinco de Mayo, which happens to be Diane’s favorite holiday.
If you’re picturing a little round ball with green, white, and red sprinkles, buckle up. That’s not how you win a championship - and that’s not all that cake pops are.
She created a 3-D cake pop, made to look like a sombrero with a bowl of guacamole, a bowl of salsa, nacho chips, an ice bucket with a little Corona figure at the top - all made from chocolate.
And that is how you win a cake pop championship.
The hardest part was probably getting it there.
“I had to make it here in New Jersey, then find a way to transport it to Ohio in one piece. It took some ingenuity, styrofoam, rigging up a Starbucks tumbler with a stand and some ice, but we made it through security,” explains Diane. “Somehow, we got it there in one piece.”
Diane’s base of operations is her chocolate shop in Pompton Plains called Just A Little Somethin’ that she owns with her husband, Joe. They like to call it “The Sweetest Spot in Town”, but that might be selling it short. It’s not just another chocolate shop - it’s a real, small-town place where the artistry and creativity she puts into her products takes “sweet” to another level.
“The artistry that goes into a cake pop is what drew my attention to it all,” Diane says about how she became interested in making cake pops. “I just kept and kept at it, and it just became second nature to me. Now, I just build on my creativity with some cake pop dough and some chocolate to turn it into a Power Ranger or a mermaid or something out of your imagination. It just snowballed from there.”
It’s not just cake pops in the shop, though. They have gourmet stuffed cookies that will make you forget Crumbl exists. Their Triple Threat Brownie (brownie, Oreo, and chocolate chip cookie, topped with edible cookie dough), stuffed Oreos, and cupcakes are otherworldly. And they have all the standard offerings you’d expect from a chocolate shop - chocolate candies, chocolate covered pretzels, strawberries, gourmet apples, and everything else - but nearly everything is homemade to gourmet levels.
The dessert creativity is off the charts. And it’s all hand made, all from scratch.
For many of the things in the shop, it’s simply edible art.
“One of the best compliments Diane gets is that people say ‘this is almost too pretty to eat.’ They literally want to save it, because it’s a conversation piece,” says Joe.
“We’re bringing the candy shop into the modern age. We look to elevate the experience with what we do. It’s all small-batch - nothing mass-produced, sitting in trays forever. It’s all made in-house with our own flair. We add upgrades that we think bring it to the next level from your standard chocolate shops.”
“We do a lot of dessert tables at events, parties, weddings that we’ll make custom things for. For our own daughter’s wedding, we made place settings with picture frames that looked like you’d buy in a high-end store, but were all edible, made from chocolate. People wanted to take them home and keep them rather than eat them.”
Creativity has always been at the core of who Diane is. She was a dance instructor and competitive choreographer for most of her life. But as a mom, she started making treats for her kids and sharing them with other parents, and in 2012 started a home-based commercial creating her treats due to the response she’d received. Her creativity had taken a dance step over to the kitchen.
By 2022, it was time for a real change. They decided to open up a shop, and found it right in their hometown that they love. But her heart of a dancer still beats strong, as her husband Joe admits. He says that she can often be seen dancing through the store as she’s making her treats.
It’s hard not to picture this cake pop champ as a chocolate version of Mary Poppins - or should that be Cake Poppins? Or maybe Wanda Wonka, as the preschool kids she visited on career day called her when she gave her cake pop demonstration.
Diane has embraced the sweetness vibe wholeheartedly. It shows in the love that she has for what she’s doing, for her community, and the legacy she’s trying to create.
For all the bougie vibe that goes into what she’s making, it’s still rooted in that throwback memory of all that a candy shop should be.
Candy shops are nostalgic for all of us - there’s a reason that we have the phrase “like a kid in a candy shop “. Most of us have our favorites that we remember going to as children. For many of us in Wayne, it was Nagel’s Candy Barn. “We’d love to have a similar legacy,” according to Diane and Joe. “10, 15 years from now, having that same type of longevity that we’re trying to build - to become someone’s great childhood memory of what a candy shop should be.”
Just A Little Somethin’ is located at 591 Newark Pompton Turnpike in Pompton Plains. They’re open until 6PM on Weekdays and 4PM on Saturdays.