Cupcakes Take L.A.

Over Spring Break, my fellow cupcake fiend, Amanda, accompanied me to 5 cupcake shops in Los Angeles. Although I never imagined it could happen, I actually suffered from cupcake overload for the first time in my life! We rated each place in terms of Presentation and Taste; here's a round-up:

Amanda outside Crumbs (oh, yeah, and a beautiful day in L.A.)

Crumbs
9465 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA


We tried:
• Red Velvet
• Blackout
• Cookie Dough

Presentation:
Grotesque. They were just grossly enormous, and they weighed a pound each. Not appetizing.

Taste:
Moist, but almost too moist. These cupcakes tasted almost . . . damp. The Red Velvet was so oily it sort of clung to the inside of my mouth. The flavors of all three were very bland. The marshmallow frosting on the Blackout cake was closer to elastic, and the frosting on the Cookie Dough left an unpleasant chemical after-taste.

The damage--hey, we had 12 more to go!

Grade:
Bigger is not better: D



Vanilla Bakeshop
512 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA




We tried:
• Spicy Carrot (Mini)
• Banana Chocolate Chip (Mini)
• Black & White (Mini)

Looks:
Sophisticated and upscale, these cupcakes took the cake in terms of aesthetics. The wide selection of minis is also a plus.

Taste:
With a mini cupcake, the delicate cake/frosting ratio is thrown out of wack, and one is left with much too much frosting and much too little cake. All three cupcakes were quite dry and not very flavorful. One reviewer discovered a hard clump of sugar in the frosting of her Black & White cupcake. A disappointment.

Grade:
Form cannot replace function: C+


Yummy Cupcakes
313 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA

We tried:
• Red Velvet
• Root Beer Float
• Brown Sugar Cinnamon

Looks:
Messy and homemade. The shop looked more like a cafeteria, and with gloopy bowls of frosting strewn about, the cupcakes looked less than appealing.

Taste:
The decor and staff were off-putting, but one reviewer called this Red Velvet the best he'd ever had. It was much more chocolatey than your classic Red Velvet, and had a delectable cream-cheese frosting. The Brown Sugar had both a crumb topping and vanilla buttercream—how could you complain? And the Root Beer Float tasted just like one.

Grade:
The place was a bit off-kilter, but we can overlook that: B+


SusieCakes
11708 San Vincente Blvd
Los Angeles, CA


SusieCakes had a lot more seating, but a lot fewer cupcakes.

We tried:
• Red Velvet
• Chocolate Mint
• Chocolate



Looks:
Homey and classic. SusieCakes is a real bakery, and while they have a limited cupcake selection, it's much less a scene.

My favorite thing about SusieCakes: they had a pitcher of water and cups sitting out (hey, it's the small things).

Taste:
Rich and buttery. The cake/frosting balance leaned too far toward frosting in this reviewer's opinion. The tangy cream-cheese frosting on the Red Velvet could have been sweeter. The Chocolate Mint had a nice, although artificial, mint flavor that did not overwhelm.

Oooh, sprinkles!

Grade:
Old-fashioned deliciousness earns an: A-

The damage at Susiecakes.

Sprinkles
9635 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA

It's a scene at Sprinkles

We tried:
• Red Velvet
• Irish Chocolate
• Cinnamon Sugar



Looks:
Sleek and simple. The only thing I don't like about the tiny decorations in the center is that although you can eat them, you really shouldn't.

On the left, we have Cinnamon Sugar; in the back is Red Velvet; and on the right is the St. Patrick's Day special, Irish Chocolate.
Taste:
A delicate crumb. Rich, deep flavors. What more could you ask for in a cupcake? O.K. I will register a few complaints, but I don't really mean them: the Irish Chocolate, a Belgian dark chocolate cake topped with Bailey's Irish Cream Cheese Frosting, could have had a stronger Bailey's flavor; and the Cinnamon Sugar is really more like a muffin. (It's topped with sparkling sugar, not frosting.)

Grade:
Yes, it's a scene. Yes, $3.25 for a cupcake is outrageous. But come on, live a little: A

Adventures in . . . Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Ina, you have failed me. Not the kind of failure where I, like, stop making your pesto pasta or coconut cupcakes or peach blueberry crumbles--don't worry, it's nothing like that. It's a very minor kind of failure, the kind where, maybe, next time, when a whole bunch of wackos on the Food Network website tell me that your carrot cake is too oily, that the cooking time for it is drastically wrong, well, maybe next time I'll believe them. And I'll add to my list of complaints: they sank! I hate when cupcakes sink, but then again, they're so easily salvageable--I just slapped a whole lot of cream cheese frosting on top of them, made a little "x" with some extra grated carrot, and these guys were good to go. And, well, I'll just admit it, oily and sunken and slathered with much too much cream cheese frosting, these were pretty delicious.

Ina Garten's Carrot Cake Cupcakes

2 cups sugar
1 1/3 cups vegetable oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 extra-large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
3 cups grated carrots (less than 1 pound)
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
Cream Cheese Frosting--see the Coconut Cupcakes post

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line muffin tins

• Grate 3 C carrots, chop 1 C walnuts, and measure out 1 C raisins. Set aside together.
• Sift in separate bowl:
2 C flour
2 t cinnamon
2 t baking soda
1 ½ t salt
• In separate, large bowl, beat together with electric mixer :
2 C sugar
1 1/3 C vegetable oil
1 t vanilla
• Add 3 eggs, 1 at a time.
• With the mixer on low speed, add ½ of the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Add carrot/raisin/walnut mixture to the remaining dry mix, mix well, and add to the batter. Mix until just combined.

Scoop batter into 22 muffin cups, about ¾ full. Bake at 375 for 10 min., then reduce oven temp. to 350, and cook for a further 15 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean (I actually kept them in a little bit longer, just to see whether they would get some more structurally integrity--alas, they did not.). Cool on a rack.