Saturday, June 9, 2012

Strawberry Shortcake showdown

For months, I've been wanting to do a side-by-side comparison between similar cupcakes. The stars just never aligned quite right until yesterday, when I was able to bring together a Cafe Moxo Shortcake cupcake with Heavenly Delight's Strawberry Shortcake.


As you can see, these two cupcakes look nothing alike. Moxo and HD have different cupcake styles -- Moxo with its tower of frosting and HD with its overflowing cake cup. 

I had tried Moxo's Shortcake last summer and liked it a lot. The vanilla frosting, light but rich, left me in a sugar-happy haze, and I was also a fan of the white cake and chopped-strawberry stuffing. This time, however,  I didn't get the quality of cupcake I was expecting. This Shortcake's cake was dry and stale-tasting around the edges, though the middle was better. I still loved the frosting, but the lack of fresh cake put this one in the negative category for me. 



Meanwhile, HD's Strawberry Shortcake lived up to HD's typical standards for moist cake and thick, luscious buttercream frosting. The Strawberry Shortcake lacked a filling, but I liked the combination of vanilla and strawberry frosting (and the pink glitter sprinkles on top didn't hurt, either). 

I have to point out that while Moxo cupcakes tend toward a more gourmet style, HD's are the kind of cupcakes you'd expect to come out of Grandma's kitchen, especially if Grandma likes to experiment with every flavor under the sun (as I can attest from having sampled nearly 40 HD cupcakes over the past year). Both of those approaches to cupcakes are stellar as far as I'm concerned, and a lot of times my taste depends on my mood. And I'm sure that if Moxo's cake had been fresher, it would have been a more serious contest. I can only judge what's in front of me, though. 

There's no doubt that, between these two, HD reigned. 

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