Sprinkle, Sprinkle Little Cupcake

Usually, we don't cupcake binge two weeks in a row, but I noticed that Sprinkles has a salty caramel cupcake featured this month, so I didn't want to miss it. I've had a hankering for caramel (especially salty) lately. Plus, it’s been awhile since I've eaten Sprinkles.

The biggest draw for Sprinkles is its chic Beverly Hills origin and the founder is a judge on Cupcake Wars. They are somewhat comparable to Crave in terms of presentation (i.e. frosting application, use of fondant, etc) and similar in taste. Sprinkles and Crave vary slightly in flavor options, size and price. Sprinkles cupcakes are a bit smaller and about 25 cents more than most cupcakeries. But if you follow them on Twitter, they often feature a free cupcake flavor each day to the first 50 or so customers who whisper a secret phrase when placing their order. I got myself a free strawberry cupcake by doing this over the weekend.

Now, to the good stuff...my flavor selection included: salty caramel (top middle), strawberry (bottom left) and cinnamon sugar (bottom middle). Boyfriend got pumpkin (top left), vanilla (top right) and dark chocolate (bottom right).

Boyfriend ate his vanilla and dark chocolate cupcakes before I got home from work, so I didn't have a chance to try them. With both of these flavors, you are given the option of having sprinkles on them or not. What's a Sprinkles cupcake without sprinkles? Never mind. Anyway, the vanilla is made with Madagascar vanilla and the dark chocolate is Belgian dark chocolate cake with bittersweet chocolate frosting. Boyfriend enjoyed them. I guess there isn’t much to say about these core flavors.

When I got home, I had the strawberry. Again, another standard flavor. I liked it. It had appropriate cake and frosting consistency.

The second cupcake I had was the cinnamon sugar. I had this cupcake a long time ago, so I needed a refresher. It's lightly spiced buttermilk cake dusted with cinnamon sugar. It was good enough. It reminded me of a cinnamon donut. I would have preferred frosting on it.

Finally, boyfriend and I had our specialty cupcakes. Boyfriend had his pumpkin with cinnamon cream cheese frosting and it tasted as he expected. I don’t care for pumpkin, but I tried it and thought it was good.

Saving my hotly anticipated cupcake for last, I had my salty caramel. It was buttery caramel cake with caramel cream cheese frosting and sprinkled with fleur de sel (aka salt). It was yummy. It had the perfect amount of caramel and salt. I prefer the chocolate cupcakes with salted caramel a little more, but this one satisfied my craving.

While not on the top of our cupcake list, Sprinkles is a good alternative once in awhile; especially when they have special featured flavors.

And so, the cupcake journey goes on...

Sweet Saturday Surprise

The weekend before last, we toned down the sweet factor a bit with some desserts from Whole Foods. I had a few small salted caramel cupcakes and chocolate chip cannolis. The salted caramel cupcakes were a bit heavy on the caramel filling, but overall, both desserts (or all four I should say, as I had two of each) were pretty good.

As planned, this past weekend was dedicated to Gigi's. I had Red Velvet (top left), Champagne (bottom left) and English toffee (bottom right). Boyfriend had grasshopper (top right), wedding cake (middle left) and white midnight magic (middle right).

A little apprehensive, I tried the English toffee first. For some reason, I always correlate toffee with a flavor combination of nuts and coffee (perhaps because it rhymes?), which is why I was hesitant to try this one. I don't drink coffee and as I've said before, don't really like sweet-salty mix. This cupcake is a toffee cake with toffee filling and frosting, and rimmed with chocolate toffee bits. Boy was I pleasantly surprised! It was excellent. And not too much toffee flavor like you'd expect. It was balanced perfectly and the toffee bits gave it a nice crispy crunch. Probably the best cupcake out of the three I had that day.

My second cupcake was the red velvet and third was champagne. As I've tried these before, I don't have anything new to say about them. They are both very delicious and as most Gigi's cupcakes, have nice little touches. I like the light sprinkle of sugar crystals on top of the red velvet and the champagne has edible pearls and white chocolate chips surrounding the frosting.

By the time I got to the champagne cupcake, I thought I was going to pass out. Eating occurred in slow motion and everything sounded like those slow, digitally altered voices similar to when Will Ferrell got shot in the neck by that dart in the movie Old School. I've started to pace my cupcake consumption by spacing the eating of each one at about one hour intervals. It's worked well for the most part. I just think Gigi's cupcakes are so filling that even the hour between the second and third cupcakes wasn’t enough this time around.

Not sure yet what's next on the schedule of sweet eats, but stay tuned!