A SWEET Treat

The start of 2012 has gone against my usual cupcake habit of a few times per month. I've already met that quota in the first two weeks of January. Anyway, this past weekend, we returned to SWEET. Similar to Celebrity, it's been quite sometime since we had SWEET's cupcakes. I recall our last experience with SWEET was a positive one, so we figured we would check them out again. They are located in Houston's CITYCENTRE, which was close to my alcohol promotion gig Saturday night. By the way, the use of all caps is how these establishments position themselves.

The fiance's selections were: carrot (top right), red velvet with sugar crystals (top middle) and vanilla bean (bottom left). All of which, he enjoyed. He said the carrot was better than the one he had at Celebrity. Mine were: salted caramel (top right), vanilla with chocolate (bottom middle) and strawberry (bottom right). Yes, they had salted caramel! Yay!

The ritual of strawberry was my first cupcake. It was white cake with some strawberry pieces and strawberry frosting. Overall, it had good flavor. Consistency of the cake was right except for some slight dryness on the edges that were not frosted.

Second cupcake was the vanilla with chocolate frosting. This was a fairly decent tasting cupcake. Similar issue with the dry edges as the strawberry. I think Celebrity did a little better than SWEET on this one, but Crave still beats everyone at this.

Last cupcake I had was the salted caramel. It was a caramel cake with caramel filling and frosting with a dash of sea salt on top. While it sounds like too much caramel, it was not. The cake was light and it had only a little caramel filling, so all was perfectly balanced. This one fulfilled my craving and was my favorite cupcake of the three.

Still not as big as Crave or Gigi's, SWEET's cupcakes seemed slightly bigger than Celebrity's. They also had a little more frosting than Celebrity, but nowhere near Gigi's and not completely frosted toward the edge. And their prices were a bit less at $3.00 per cupcake.

We'll probably take a break from the weekly cupcake frenzy this weekend. But we have an addiction; a weakness; and have been known to not always do what we say...

Cupcaking Celebrity Style

It has been over a year since we had Celebrity Cupcakes, so we decided to give them another try. From what I remember, our first experience was good. But we've been exposed to so many cupcake joints since then that we wanted to give it another go to see how they measure up.

The biggest draw of going there was that I wanted to try their fleur de sel cupcake, which is my latest salted caramel flavor craving. I remember seeing it the first time I went there and thought it was a little odd. Boy did I miss out! Much to my dismay, they were out of the fleur de sel. So, my flavor selections were: red velvet (middle left), vanilla with milk chocolate (middle right) and strawberry truffle (bottom left). Fiance's selections included: German chocolate (top left), vanilla bean (top right) and carrot (bottom right). I did not taste the fiance’s flavors, but he told me that the German chocolate and vanilla bean were good; the carrot was OK, but that he's had better carrot cupcakes at other cupcakeries.

My first cupcake was the strawberry truffle, which consists of dark chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream frosting. Overall, the cupcake was decent, but the cake part was a bit dry. It fell apart too easily.

Second cupcake I had was the vanilla with milk chocolate frosting. This was better than the strawberry truffle. This is a pretty basic cupcake, so not much to say about it; satisfying nonetheless.

The last cupcake I ate was the red velvet. This was by far the best one I tried out of all three. I'm glad I saved this one for last. The cake was the right consistency and had a nice, sweet cream cheese frosting.

Aside from the comments from my cupcake taste test, my main complaints with Celebrity's cupcakes are that the size is smaller than Crave or Gigi's even though they are the same price; and they don’t frost the entire top of the cupcake out to the edges.

Celebrity is tucked away near the West University shopping center. While the experience wasn't a disaster, there are better options out there that we prefer.

There are a few new cupcakes out there that I've been eyeing lately. Gigi's has advertised a gluten free white velvet cupcake. I’m not sure how gluten free foods compare to regular. I'd prefer a regular version, but if not, I'll give the gluten free one a shot. And Sprinkles has a s'more cupcake featured this month. So I'm hoping to give them a try soon and report back my findings.

Holiday Delights

Happy New Year! There has been a lot of dessert relishing over the holidays, but I'll just highlight a few experiences over the past few weeks.

At my regular day job, a group of us go out for lunch often. When each person in our group has a birthday, we take them out for lunch and devour cupcakes – usually from Crave. Just before Christmas, we had a birthday lunch for my coworker and friend, Rob. During our lunch, our waiter had a little mishap with the box of cupcakes, almost dropping them. While most of the cupcakes survived, Rob's unfortunately did not. It was a cupcake catastrophe! For consolation, the restaurant gave him a slice of cake and another coworker, Melissa, picked up a replacement cupcake as well.

For the month of December, Crave had a few holiday cupcakes; one of which I decided to try, which was gingerbread. It was a gingerbread cake with cream cheese frosting and a little fondant gingerbread man on top. It was definitely delish. I loved it! It's one of those things that comes around only once a year, so it's definitely crave-able.

The fiance and I (yes, we got engaged on Christmas) spent time with our families and encountered desserts everywhere we went. But one night while in the Tampa, Florida area, we ventured over to Gigi's. We had the Nodini cannoli (top left and bottom right), fiance had Italian cream (top right) and I had butterscotch dream (bottom left).

The first cupcake I chowed down on was butterscotch dream, which is butterscotch cake and filling with toasted vanilla frosting and rimmed with coconuts and pecans. I'm not a fan of coconut and pecans, so I picked them off (a bit tedious to do). The cake part was good, but it got even better when I got to the butterscotch filling.

Fiance's first cupcake was Italian cream, which was Italian cream cake topped with cream cheese frosting and toasted coconut. I tried a bite of his and thought it was pretty tasty.

Fiance and I were anxious to try our cannoli cupcakes, which is amaretto cake filled and topped with cannoli cream and topped with a mini cannoli. This cupcake did not disappoint. It was as good as we anticipated, so well worth trying. The cannoli on top was very yummy as was the rest of the cupcake.

Keep watching for the cupcake quests to continue this year! Even though I said I needed a break in my last post. Ha! Who am I kidding?

More Belly Busting

The week before last, we went to Gigi's as planned. We got a whopping seven cupcakes because we had a free one with the punch card. I don't know why we didn't just buy five and get one free. Anyway…My flavor selections consisted of birthday surprise (top left), mellow cream (top second from left) and wedding cake (top second from right). Boyfriend's flavors were midnight magic (top right), grasshopper (bottom left), red velvet (bottom second from left) and champagne (bottom right).

First cupcake I ate was the mellow cream. It's a devil's food cake filled with chocolate chips and marshmallow cream; and topped with chocolate ganache and a swirl of white frosting. It was a lot smaller than the normal Gigi's cupcake due to the frosting. This is a gourmet version of the ol' Hostess Cupcakes. Crave Cupcakes also has a version of this that I've tried before called Crave chocolate and cream. The Gigi's version was good, but from what I remember, Crave's was better.

My second cupcake was the birthday surprise. It's a white cake with pink buttercream frosting, topped with sprinkles. For a standard issue cupcake, it was quite good.

The final cupcake was the wedding cake. I've described this one before and it's similar to the birthday surprise except for the vanilla frosting and white sprinkle dots. No complaints on this one either, but I was busting out of my jeans at this point; forcing each bite.

Last weekend, we decided to do the bundt cake thing again for a change. It was the same as before and just as good again this time around.

This weekend, I think I'll be baking at home; probably vanilla cupcakes. This gourmet cupcake habit is expensive. My wallet (and belly) need a break.

No Cupcakes, but Desserts a Plenty

Boyfriend and I have been traveling the last few weeks. We went to Las Vegas for a little trip and then Louisiana for Thanksgiving. We stayed at the Planet Hollywood Resort and mostly ate desserts at a few places in the adjoining mall. One evening, we went to an Italian cafe and I had gelato while the boyfriend had a piece of carrot cake and a colossal white chocolate macadamia nut cookie. My gelato was good and boyfriend enjoyed his desserts; especially the enormous cookie. The second night, we returned to the Italian cafe. I had a colossal chocolate chip cookie, he had his white chocolate macadamia nut cookie again and we split a slice of red velvet cake. Both were OK to me. I wasn’t overly impressed. The third day, I stopped by the Nestle Toll House shop and got a bunch of cookies for the both of us. You can't go wrong with Nestle.

One of the popular sweet shops in Vegas is Sugar Factory. There is one located in the Miracle Mile shops at Planet Hollywood and a new Sugar Factory restaurant with the store at the Paris Las Vegas Casino. We had dessert at the Planet Hollywood mall location while we vacationed in Vegas last year. We had a mammoth red velvet cupcake there. I remember it tasting alright, but being a bit dry. This year, we ate dinner at the Sugar Factory restaurant, but skipped dessert. Whoa?! Thought I'd include a few pics of the store though...

While in Louisiana visiting the boyfriend's family for Thanksgiving, we ate a lot of cheesecake. One of which, his aunt made from scratch...white chocolate with white and milk chocolate shavings on top. Yum! There was a red velvet cake and an ice cream cake too, which I also ate. Goodness, I'm going to get diabetes or a heart attack!

The boyfriend has made a demand for Gigi's again this weekend. Hopefully, they will have some different cupcakes that we can try.

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!