Rock bottom

Cupcake day was all over the spectrum this week -- good, bad and mediocre.

I wound up with a trio to try yesterday -- one from Cafe Moxo and two from Java Express, my most recent discovery.

I was most excited to try one of the pair from Java, a cherry-almond cupcake with cherry pie filling and cherry-almond buttercream frosting.

It tasted fantastic. The yellow cake was fresh and moist (the batch had been baked that morning at Java), and the frosting was thick and rich. And then there was the fresh cherry pie filling. It was just the right touch. I ate only half of it because it was the first of three, and the Java cupcakes are jumbo-size.

I chose to try Cafe Moxo's Hostess With the Mostest next. It's exactly what it sounds like -- a gourmet version of the snack-cake classic.

The chocolate cake was reasonably fresh for Moxo, and the marshmallow filling was delightful. I'm not a fan of dark or bittersweet chocolate, so the ganache icing didn't thrill me. But overall it was a good cupcake, and it was in the upper tier as far as Moxo cupcakes I've tried.

I had saved the other Java Express selection -- chocolate peppermint -- for last because I didn't want the peppermint flavor to linger on my palate for the other cupcakes.

I knew something wasn't right when I ran into a struggle while trying to peel the paper lining away from the cake with my fork. My suspicions were confirmed when I went for the first bite: Hard. The cake wasn't just dry -- it clearly had been sitting out for more than a day at Java. Still, I wasn't ready to give up. After all, the frosting is my favorite part of any cupcake. So I dipped my fork into the pretty, pink-tinted whipped topping ... took a bite ... arrghhh! It tasted almost like plastic. When my coworker Kathy tried it, she reported an overwhelming amount of shortening. I was shocked, considering the quality of the two other cupcakes I'd tried from Java (the first was a lemon-raspberry that I wrote about in my last post). I had to throw away the majority of the chocolate peppermint. It pains me to toss out a cupcake, but it just wasn't edible.

Java Express still has a few cupcakes I haven't tried, and I'm eager to go back and sample the rest. I'm convinced that the chocolate peppermint was an isolated bad experience. It can happen to anybody. It does bring up a point worth stressing, though: Freshness is everything. I wish all the bakeries and shops would consider that.