Pretty cupcakes can be deceiving ...

Cupcakes, by their nature, aren't the healthiest food choice -- obviously. Most people don't eat them for nutrients. But when I found out that Food Fantasies, Springfield's popular health-food grocery store, sells its own version, I knew I needed to sample them. I was curious how vegan cupcakes would differ from their mainstream cousins. 

From the five flavors the store offered on Thursday, I chose chocolate chai and lemon. The cupcakes came two to a pack, in a cute pink box cleverly designed to hold the cupcakes in place with handy finger holes for pulling them out. The cakes were pretty, with frosting piped into a luscious-looking mound. 

My coworkers Kathy Rem, Jayette Bolinski and Marilyn Lynch joined me for the twin tasting, and we were excited to try organic cupcakes. Intrigued by the name, we first cut into the chocolate chai, which had greeted us with a pleasant chai scent when we opened the box. Immediately, we were alarmed by the hardness of the cake. We each took one bite and recoiled in displeasure -- the chocolate cake was completely devoid of moisture. We assumed it was because the vegan ingredients aren't as conducive to moist cake as ingredients used in traditional cake. (To peruse Food Fantasies' cupcake menu and see ingredients in each, visit http://www.foodfantasies.info/bakery/.)

The chocolate chai's frosting had a light, creamy texture and tasted good, and I was grateful for the high cake-to-frosting ratio as I gamely finished my entire half (a couple of us stopped after the first bite or two). One observation about the chocolate chai cake was that it was like "unflavored pumpernickel."

I'd be lying if I said we had high hopes for the lemon, but we weren't able to back down from a cupcake-tasting challenge, so we forged ahead. Again, the knife balked against the dense cake ("Unyielding," according to Marilyn), which, oddly, was vanilla rather than lemon-flavored. We did find a lemon-curd filling, which I felt had an artificial taste, like that of Lemonheads candy. (Marilyn disagreed -- she liked the flavor and later said it left a pleasant aftertaste.)

The frosting, which I liked slightly less than the chai frosting only because I didn't care for the flavor of the lemon, retained the nice consistency of the first cupcake. In fact, we decided that Food Fantasies should abandon the cupcakes and focus on selling just the frosting, ready-made.

Ultimately, we decided we're done testing Food Fantasies cupcakes. We're pretty sure there are ways to make vegan cupcakes taste better, and, frankly, we're disappointed in the store for charging customers for such poor-quality cupcakes.

One high point of the dry Food Fantasies cupcakes, though: After drinking quarts of water to wash them down, we were well-hydrated.