Cupcakes Across America: House of Cupcakes - Princeton

Like every home baker and lover of cupcakes, I watch Cupcake Wars  and am frantic as I see the professional bakers make big errors, or worry when they are trying something new but am mostly humbled by the creative artistry in both decoration and flavor.  So how lucky am I to frequently be in the neighborhood of such greatness with House of Cupcakes in Princeton?  I'm LUCKY!  They appeared on Cupcake Wars in 2011 and as you might notice in their pic below - they won!  YAY!!

How cute is their shop - so cute - so Princeton - so delicious.

I stopped by there for Big Mama's birthday celebration.  Having a string of birthdays all in a row, we were a little caked-out so a single serving portions were in order. I swung by HOC to pick up a six pack for our little celebration.  They have up to twenty flavors on any given day and they are always so super nice.  They do minis too by advance order.  I got a mixed load on this day with Big Mama's favorite, Vanilla - or Vanilla Riot as HOC calls it, as the star: 

 

 

To fill out the mixer, I got a bunch of other flavors including Creme Brulee, Oreo & Peanut Butter cup. 

I've had a bunch of different flavors from HOC on many visits there.  The staff is always friendly and speedy in filling your order.  I've never had a bad experience or product out of this shop and their prices are reasonable - even for Princeton where everything is 10% more expensive.  I especially like their Red Velvet - so moist and for me, the exact cake to frosting ratio!

I <3 you House of Cupcakes!

Cupcakes Across America! The Cupcake Tree Santa Clarita, CA

And let's go back to California shall we?  Am I ever in the same time zone for more than a week at a time?  Well no - apparently not.  This trip back to CA was all over the place.  An hour before I had to go to my client's site, I found myself in Santa Clarita.  A quick google search on the iPhone found me The Cupcake Tree, and unassuming small cupcakery in a strip mall.  So often, I find myself in fancy schmancy places that if there's not a doorman saying hello, I'm prone to raising an eyebrown.  I'm judgemental - it's part of my charm.  And it assists in my snarkiness.   So when I see a tiny little shop with a nothing-fancy sign, I get a little worried.

Since I was there sortof near Easter, I was greeted by this cute little Peep cake:

And then I noticed their adorable cakepop selection:

And then finally, I notice their good selection of cupcakes:

They looked pretty good and there was a decent selection for what looked like a very small shop.  They had the standards:  Vanilla with vanilla buttercream which they cutely call "the blond" and red velvet with cream cheese frosting which they call "the southerner".  So cute names - I get it.  And a few other interesting flavors:  Vanilla Root Beer - vanilla cake with root beer buttercream,  Sweetart - a lemon cake with a lime frosting.  Then I noticed one called "Samoa".  Wait - like the girl scout cookies?  Turns out - YEAH!  This cupcake was amazing.  A coconut "infused" cake with caramel in the middle, topped with chocolate buttercream, caramel drizzle and a few coconut flakes.  This tasted JUST LIKE the famous and somewhat dangerous cookie.  And the cake was sooo moist and delicious.  And the balance between cupcake and frosting was perfect. 

So the lesson here is don't let a strip mall small shop turn you off.  This was one of the best cupcakes I've had.  Not an original flavor combination but done so well that you don't even mind. 

One other note about this shop - their website has a link they call "SVC Supporter".  A click on this link brings you to a page where they explain that they support the business of the Valley of Santa Clarita, using local businesses to help support the community.  And even playing music from local musicians.  What this shop lacks in size, they make up for in quality and class.  Get thee to Santa Clarita for the Cupcake Tree.

More Cupcakes Across America! VEGAS STYLE!

Sometimes in life, you’ve got to roll the dice.  Other times, you’ve got to know when to fold ‘em or hold ‘em.  And sometimes, you’ve just got to double down.  And that’s exactly what I did on my recent trip to Vegas.  Partly for work and partly for a girls’ weekend in a cabana @ Mandalay Bay surrounded by 1200 marines! – yeah – marines – and it wasn’t even my birthday.  Anywho, when the dealer gives you 7 days in Vegas, you must try at least two cupcake joints. 

First – and my apologies for not having any photos of it – The Cupcakery in Monte Carlo.  I had to walk right by it to get to Starbucks in the morning.  These cupcakes were good.  I got a Lemon Crème – it was good – moist, sweet yet tart.  A solid showing from this three location spot.  I also got a sample of the Julius – orange pineapple cake with a heavy cream frosting.  That one was good – a strong flavorful cupcake but the frosting wasn’t my fave. Nonetheless, good texture cake.

Then – The Sugar Factory.  This place is fun – part restaurant, part bar, and part candy/treat shop with their largest location in the Paris Casino Hotel on the strip and then a few other mini-shops around town.   Here's a pic from one of the mini-shops:

They make some questionable decisions on celebrity promotion:

Just kidding sitch!  We should hang out!

I went to the restaurant for dinner and it was quite good for an American style brasserie.  I had a salad and picked some onion rings and other treats from my friend’s plate.  They did have some creative ideas – macaroni and cheese pops – really – balls of mac and cheese in battered ball form and deep fried onto a stick.  Pretty brilliant.    For the cupcake test, I picked up a vanilla cupcake at the Sugar Factory mini-shop in the Miracle Mile Shops in Planet Hollywood.  While there it occurred to us that this mall used to be in Aladdin.  Remember Aladdin?  Easy come, easy go in Sin City.  

Here's the cupcake - looks good right?  

Anyway, this vanilla cupcake was not good.  Way too dry and crumbly texture and seemed stale.  The frosting was like a whipped shortening which was barely sweetened.  And is often the case with dry cake, the sides did not hold up - look at this side of this poor little guy:

Finally, the saving grace of the Sugar Factory, is the cute merch.  They have all kinds of candy, giant lollipops, and even cakepops.  And what goes better with that than an adorable rubber ducky to make the trip home with you.

More cupcakery reviews to come as I head back out west!  

Where have I been? Cupcakes Across America!

These last few weeks have been insane-balls at my real life job.  I'm not even sure what time zone I'm in right now.  (exaggeration for dramatic effect)  But with bi-coastal travel comes responsibility to my blog-readers for finding and sampling the cupcakes of the world, or in this case:  Santa Monica.  


SaMo is one of my favorite places.  Everything there is pretty - it's 70 degrees all the time, everyone is a health nut so yoga is found on every corner, and farmers markets abound all year long.  Plus, it sits right on the Pacific Ocean - one minute you're in a hustling little downtown with cute shops and the next minute you're frolicking barefoot on a beach.  Not bad.  Not bad a'tall.  


And with all the working out comes need for small rewards.  Enter:  Yummy Cupcakes, Santa Monica.  Yummy Cupcakes actually has two other locations in Southern California, one in Burbank and a new one in Brentwood - which may not be open quite yet.  And one international location in Istanbul (??reallly??)  Their website promises more locations opening soon around the country including NYC, to which I will bare the $15 train ride during my time of the month.  Don't judge.  


So what's so special about Yummy that they won Best Cupcakes in Los Angeles, 2011?  I can't say for sure but if I were voting, I'd say the "whippy buttercream" - oh and staggering over 400 flavors of cupcakes!  On this trip I had the Chocolate Chocolate.  Not fancy or pretentious - ok - not as pretentious as me, but ridiculously good. And I got to taste my friend's chocolate with vanilla frosting, and mango lime chili & salt.  Hand to God, I will master the art of the whippy frosting.  I'm particular about frosting - otherwise it's just a little piece of cake - the frosting makes it!  And this is the best texture of frosting that has ever graced my tongue.  Yummy Cupcakes takes frosting to a new level.  And the moist and flavorful cake part?  - it's like a bonus that the cake part is even good!  Finally, way to go on the size of the cupcakes - they are big - bigger than standard but not quite jumbo, although jumbos and minis are also available.  Other fun note:  they have a gluten free menu, make cupcakes in a jar, and have other treats like cupcake piesTM (think whoopie-like), and frosting bon bons.  And IMHO, no cupcake shop is complete without some type of merch - so the aprons, plates, kitchen towels, etc, all have a place to call a temporary home.  


I oddly don't have a picture of my cupcake - it didn't last long.  But here are a few I snapped in the store.  

Cupcakery Review: Classy Girl Cupcakes - Milwaukee

This week my adventures took me to the beautiful, sunny Milwaukee!  Yes - despite being March, it was really beautiful and really sunny.  I got the best weather while I was there - not a drop of rain or even a cloud in the sky which made it easy to find Classy Girl Cupcakes.  Located on Cathedral Square in downtown Milwaukee, CGC is an adorable shop that seems to specialize in cheesecake cupcakes although they do have quite a selection of gourmet cupcake flavors as well. 

So - cheesecake or regular cupcake?  Obviously both!  I mean- who knows when I'll get to Milwaukee again.  My eye was immediately drawn to a plain looking cupcake whose name was "Caramel Stout".  Hmmmm - stout - it must be related to my Irish Stout cupcake!  Since clearly it's a cupcake that's party of the beer family, I had to try it.  Then onto the cheesecake cupcakes -  there were so many.  The lovely gal at the counter pointed out a few of their best sellers but my eye was drawn to the Malted Milkshake Cheesecake.  They wrapped both of my selections together and gave me a little spoon for the cheesecake treat.

First the Caramel Stout:  

The chocolate cupcake is made with Hinterland Luna Stout beer which the CGC website says "has notes of caramel, chocolate and espresso".  The Hinterland website says that the Luna Stout is infused with nitrogen which sounds like another famous stout from Ireland (that rhymes with Minnus).  If you've read my previous post about my stout cupcake, the Trevor Cupcake Cake, then you know I love beer based cupcakes.  The Class Girl version was really really good - the cake part was light but super flavorful which I imagine comes from the beer.  I've never had the Hinterland beer but maybe I'll try it in my recipe if I can find it in my area.  My only minor complaint was with the frosting - the caramel buttercream was just way too sweet for my taste and it was quite thick and a bit gritty - like the sugar hadn't quite dissolved all the way.  I tend to like a fluffier buttercream but overall the combination was good. I wiped off a lot of the frosting though as it overwhelmed the cupcake.

The Malted Milkshake Cheesecake: 

The Classy Girl website describes this treat as a milk chocolate cheesecake blended with malt powder.  On top is a chocolate buttercream with a malted milk ball.  I LOVE me some malt.  When I was a kid, I used to drive 6 miles to the ice cream shop that had powdered malt that they would put on top of your ice cream instead of the lame liquid malt that other shops used.  (Note....liquid malt=lame)  The bottom or crust of the cheesecake was brownie - yum!  So I was super psyched to dig into this concoction in hopes of getting a little piece of buttercream, cheesecake and brownie on my mini spoon.  Unfortunately, the spoon pushed the buttecream off in one lump.  Ok - no harm done except that the buttercream couldn't really be cut with the spoon.  So I just took a bite out of that - it was more fudge-like than buttercream but OK.  So then onto the cheesecake part - it was good - definitely chocolatey.  I didn't love it - it was a ricotta based cheesecake and I'm partial to more of a New York style cheesecake where it's mostly cream cheese- or at least you can't notice the grains of the ricotta like you could in this little cheesecake.  But if you like your cheesecake like that, then Classy Girl is the place for you.  Well done on the flavor of this cheesecake though - I'm sorry I wasn't partial to the textures.  

The shop:  

Very cute!  And they had cupcake merch - always a good sign of a devoted cupcake fan.  The cupcake prices are reasonable and the staff was friendly.  Definitely worth a stop if you're in downtown Milwaukee - let me know what other flavors you try!

Cupcakery Review! Cupcake in Minneapolis!

I was in Minneapolis less than 20 hours.  Plenty of time for a 1 hour meeting and 1 hour of finding my way to Cupcake which is definitely worth the trip and completely worth fighting the current construction in their neighborhood.  The had at least 24 different cupcake flavors - not counting their Baby Cakes minis. 

 As this was only a few days before Paddy's Day, they were featuring an Irish Car Bomb Cupcake - you can see my recipe below - theirs was seemingly quite similar although I didn't try it.  I had taken a look at their extensive menu before I went.  There website is great and shows pictures of each cupcake but lucky for me, their bakers like to experiment!  If it's not obvious from my last post, I think the best way to consume booze is in cupcake form.  When I saw they had a "Bourbon Butterscotch Chocolate" cupcake, my jaw hit the floor and my mouth started watering.  And I'm so thrilled that I did.  If there was a Guiness World Record for the fastest cupcake consumption, I would definitely have won with the way I inhaled this completely amazing cupcake. Usually, I try to take only one or two bites of a cupcake (girl can not stay curvey on cupcakes alone!) but I couldn't even stop myself.   I'm not even sure I can accurately describe how this cupcake was constructed.  The frosting was amazing - I think it was either a whipped cream of some sort or a light swiss merigue - the key was that the frosting was just barely sweet and the bourbon was just enough to scent the cupcake.  If I had a bowl of this frosting, I would put my face in it.   I hope they keep this one on the menu as it would certainly earn its spot in their top sales category.

A friend I was travelling with ordered a Red Velvet and saved it for her flight home.  She later texted me to let me know that it was the best Red Velvet she's ever had.  Why these people aren't on Cupcake Wars, or in the Cupcake Hall of Fame (I just invented that!) or on the Ellen Show or some other fame creating device is beyond me.  

As a side note, the shop was really cute and the staff quite friendly.  They also have a load of cute vintage themed merchandise, much of which was cupcake related.  They serve regular food too - sandwiches, soups, salads, etc and looks like it would be a great place for lunch or a light dinner.  They have a pretty good selection of freshly baked breads too.  A great all-around bakery with a wonderful cupcake slant.  Stop by (or immediately fly to) Minneopolis to stop by Cupcake!

Cupcakery Review! Indulgence Cupcakery – Haddonfield, NJ

Having no children of my own, I get to politely excuse myself when some unpleasant parenting task is about to happen.  If I’m with you when your kid acts up, I can just leave.   Tantrum?  No thanks, I think I have a wax appointment.  Explosive diaper?  Oooh – I just had a manicure – sorry!  Time for potty training?  Apparently for that one I’m totally on board.  When my friend dedicated President’s Day weekend to the trials of potty training her 2 year old, I of course volunteered my non-parenting expertise which says for everything child-rearing, rely on bribery.   If I know anything about toddlers (which I don’t) I know that they like toys, cartoons and sugar.  This philosophy also works with dudes in their twenties but for them you can also add beer. 

Anyway, for my potty training adventure, I swung by Indulgence Cupcakery in Haddonfield, NJ to pick up a dozen bribes – err – cupcakes.  I got there at about 4pm and they close at 6 so they were already out of a number of flavors.  To their credit, they did have a lot of flavors available for the day.  I got the following:  Smores,  Red Velvet, Butterfinger, Cookies and Cream, Peanutbutter Cup, Classic Vanilla, Classic Chocolate, and Black Forrest and one more flavor I can’t seem to recall but I think there was a pretzel in it. I'd guess they had 15 or so flavors of the over 45 they list on their website.   Anyway, the place was totally cute and I liked their logo:

Here are the dozen adorable cupcakes.  I can’t decide if these are mini – I guess technically they are – they are certainly smaller than a standard cupcake.  But with each having a generous dollop of frosting – not to mention additional toppings like nuts, mini chocolate chips, etc.  These cupcakes are just the right size – 2 or 3 bites  - enough for a sweet treat and it’s gone before you have time to calculate how many more sessions with your trainer this will cost you. 

I ate the Smore cupcake.

I suppose it was a “graham” cupcake with chocolate frosting and a marshmallow syrup that penetrated through the frosting and was inside the cupcake too.  The cupcake was moist and a bit like a spice cake but I can’t say it had a graham flavor – yummy nonetheless.  The frosting was thick and chocolately and topped with the graham cracker crumbs –  a nice touch.  I’m a fluffy frosting person rather than thick but this was still super good. 

One - VERY minor complaint - it took a while for someone to come up front to help me and although she was certainly friendly, she warned me to hold the box very straight because the cupcakes were prone to tipping over.   I was nervous the whole way that I'd open my box of 12 cupcakes to find one stuck together frosting/cake mash.  Maybe there's a better packaging option out there to prevent top-heavy cuppies from tipping?

And for my potty training pal - he did great!  He had the cookies and cream!