Cakelove creator Warren Brown, who has been giving Washingtonians a Sugar Rush for the last four years with his love-'em-or-hate-'em cupcakes and generating controversy with his temperature-sensitive buttercream frosting, is about to embark on a more wholesome enterprise. Warren Brown's next trick is making energy bars.

The tall, slim 35-year-old lawyer turned baker and "fascinating entrepreneur" is an avid runner with a schedule so hectic it makes ours look like cake. He often found himself so busy during the day as he shuttled among his two bakeries, Love Café, tapings of his one-year-old Food Network show Sugar Rush, photo shoots for the endless parade of media, volunteer demonstrations and meetings with various vendors seeking to sell him a better cash register, that he skipped meals.

He wanted to grab something quick and healthy from the grocery shelves, and after seeing dozens of energy bar choices, he tried several. Most of them, he thought, were the equivalent of eating sawdust with a bitter chemical aftertaste. So, he figured, how hard could it be to make tastier ones of his own?

Brown started experimenting earlier this year with various dried fruit and nut combinations, putting ingredients together, looking at them, stirring them, and adding various flavorings; much the way he developed the unusual flavor combinations for his cakes.

“I like to picture myself as the food item,” he said.

He’s developed coffee, blueberry and chocolate flavors, among others, tentatively dubbing them “Scratch Bars.” Brown is open to suggestions for a better name, since his staff is not convinced about this one.

He recently sent the bars to a lab for nutrition analysis and is working on a label design. He is in discussions with a nationwide contractor to make them. He hopes to have the bars in grocery stores by spring of next year, he said.

Brown believes the market is ripe for a protein bar that actually tastes good for active people. “I’m going with the premise that I’m trying to take away market share from the current players because their product’s not that good. And I want to approach it, not on price, necessarily, but taste,” he said.

The price has yet to be determined. But as his sweets are on the costlier side ($3 cupcakes), because he says he uses real labor and real ingredients, we don’t think the energy bars will come cheap.

“If I can hit the same target for calories [as the others], that’s fine, but I think there are people out there that want taste first,” Brown said.