Cookie Dough, Champagne, Strawberry, OMG!

This week was another farmers market missing Heavenly Delight. Knowing it would be in the mid-90s again and the stand likely would be absent, I took advantage of a half personal day off work and made the trip to Petersburg on Monday for some cupcakes from OMGosh Bakery and Desserts. 

My main goal was to pick up OMG's Champagne cupcake, so I called a week in advance to be sure they would be able to make some. They kindly obliged, and I arrived mid-morning Monday to find them part of the offerings in the well-stocked display case. As long as I was there, I figured I might as well stock up, so I bought a Champagne, a Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, a Strawberry-Filled and an Oreo. (Not long after I left the store, I realized that I had already tried OMG's Oreo, and I regretted getting it instead of Lemonade, a flavor I hadn't tried.) 

I wanted to wait until Cupcake Wednesday to try them, so I stowed them in the freezer at home. Come Wednesday, I eagerly defrosted them, ready to try that Champagne for which I had longed. As much as I wanted to try that one, though, the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough grabbed me with its cookie-dough frosting (I've attempted eggless "dough" that lacked the flavor of real dough, so I was excited to try OMG's version). 

All I can say is "OMG..." The cookie-dough frosting was nearly perfect (it was a bit heavy on the dark-chocolate chunks, but it was easy enough to eat around those). Even the cake was just about right -- it was soft, moist vanilla with the same overload of chocolate chunks as the frosting, but I was pleased with the freshness in light of previous OMG cupcakes that have been on the drier side. I didn't want to stop eating this one, but I knew I had to so I'd be able to try the others. 

It was time for Champagne. Unsure what to expect but excited to find out, I pushed my fork through the light, fluffy pink frosting with candy pearls and matching pink-dyed cake. I took that first bite ... and encountered a flavor that was OMG in a not-so-good way. This cupcake tasted like Champagne, alright -- extremely dry Champagne. The bitterness overpowered the sweetness. For someone who likes their bubbly dry, this might be the ideal cupcake, but I prefer a sweeter Champagne. Cupcakes, furthermore, are SUPPOSED to be sweet. The frosting seemed to have a touch more sugar than the cake, but any sweetness was offset by the offending presence of shortening. I hate to say that I wasn't able to eat most of this one. I hate wasting cupcakes, but considering how many cupcakes I try, if I don't like it, it's not worth the calories. 

I pushed my Champagne letdown aside and moved on to the Strawberry-Filled. I was already suspicious of this one because the frosting was obviously the same shortening-based substance that had helped bring down the Champagne. One bite confirmed what I already knew, and I pushed the heap of worthless fat and calories off to the side so I could focus on the vanilla cake. The bottom half of the cupcake was a pleasant surprise. Much like the Cookie Dough, the Strawberry-Filled cake was light and moist. And  just like the name implied, a pocket of strawberry jam awaited inside, adding a pleasant fruity flavor to the delicious cake. I was happy to eat this one without that greasy frosting. 

As I said at the beginning, I mistakenly bought the Oreo instead of a fourth new flavor (find my OMG Oreo review at http://extremecupcaker.blogspot.com/2012/02/cupcake-commute.html), and I wished I had chosen the Lemonade instead. Upon later trying the Strawberry-Filled and Champagne, though, I realized that leaving the Lemonade was a blessing in disguise because I had noticed that it had the same type of undesirable icing. Everything happens for a reason, even with cupcakes!

Here's hoping next week brings Heavenly Delight back to the market!!

So-so selection

This week's farmers market coincided with another group taste-testing day at work. On our afternoon break,  four of us gathered to split six Heavenly Delight cupcakes -- three that I had been storing in the freezer at home, one that I bought this morning and two that my colleague, Kathy, also bought today.

The freezer trio consisted of Rocky Road, S'more and Root Beer Float. Today's purchases: Elvis, Cheesecake and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. We noted, as we gathered all the cupcakes for cutting, that there was a lot of brown, beige and white.

I had tried the Cheesecake and Cookie Dough before, although I noticed something this time with the Cheesecake that I hadn't noticed last time: the graham cracker crust on the bottom of the cupcake. Great idea, but I thought it blended so much with the cake that it lost its distinguishing texture. I liked the creativity, though.

But on to the new cupcakes. First up: Elvis.

Banana cake with peanut butter frosting and a garnish of banana chips and peanut butter morsels, the Elvis ranked highest for me of the cupcakes we tried today, but it didn't come close to touching my all-time favorite HD cupcakes. For one thing, the cake's banana flavoring was artificial. (And we weren't sure if there was peanut butter in the cake -- it's possible, but it was subtle if it was there.) I love HD's peanut butter frosting, and that was the highlight for me. I'd rather have it with chocolate or peanut butter cake than artificial banana. If the cake had been real banana, that likely would have bumped it up several notches. I liked the banana and peanut butter together. 

I was curious about the Root Beer Float, which Kathy had tried before and liked a lot. Root beer isn't the first flavor I'd crave, but I enjoy one once in a while. The yellow cake had a brownish tinge, as if some root beer had been mixed into the batter, but we couldn't detect the flavor. Kathy said she tasted it more in the last one she had, so maybe it was just an off batch. My quarter of the cupcake had the root beer barrel candy garnish, and it was a bit jarring to bite into the hard, crunchy candy along with the soft cake and creamy frosting, which was drizzled with a root beer syrup. HD's vanilla frosting is always good and the cake was moist, but overall this was a cupcake I could easily live without.

I've never had any particular interest in rocky road ice cream, so when I saw the Rocky Road cupcake at the HD stand, I knew I was trying it only for the sake of the blog. Normally I'd pass over that type of cupcake, but writing this blog has taught me to try things that fall outside of my favorites. I've found some things I never expected to like, but I've also had to force down more than a few flavors or flavor combinations that nearly tested my gag reflex. HD's Rocky Road was chocolate cake with walnuts baked in, topped with vanilla frosting, walnuts and marshmallows. I normally shy away from cake with nuts, and although I didn't think this was a bad cupcake, it's one I wouldn't need to try again. We felt that the cake was a tad dry and spongy, but not to a fault.

Finally, we tackled the S'more. I knew as I tried this one that I would compare it to Cafe Moxo's S'more, which is my second-favorite cupcake from that eatery. In this face-off, HD couldn't keep up. All the appropriate ingredients were there: chocolate cake, marshmallows and graham cracker cookies, plus vanilla frosting. But it was hard to tell if there was anything other than vanilla in the frosting; Moxo's S'more is topped with a luscious marshmallow creme frosting (and filled with more of the same) that makes the cupcake. I'd pass on HD's version. 

This quartet of new flavors makes me want to revisit some of my old HD favorites and put the obligatory samples on the back burner for a while. I'm thinking it's time for a Reese's ...

Cupcake road trip!

It was worth waking up before dawn yesterday morning to get to work early so I could take an extended lunch to visit Petersburg with my coworker Kathy and hit OMGosh Bakery and Desserts for this week's cupcake day. (In other news, Kathy, Jayette and I received four cupcake flavors to sample -- three of them new -- from Tracy of TLCuppycakes.)

Kathy and I were faced with a difficult decision at OMGosh. (Jayette was unable to road-trip with us due to a scheduling conflict.) The display case was filled with tempting choices. Kathy chose Carrot, and after much deliberation I chose Chocolate Mint and Butterfinger. (There was an amazing-looking Champagne cupcake that I'm going to have to go back for one of these days.)

Earlier in the day, Tracy had brought us her four cupcakes: Chocolate Peanut Butter (this one's an original from her menu), Oh Oreo!, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Rolo.

Clockwise from left: Oh Oreo!, Chocolate Peanut Butter, 

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Rolo

Our favorite of this bunch was the Oh Oreo! Vanilla cake speckled with Oreo bits, sitting on a base of Oreo crust (still crispy by the time we tried it -- amazing!) and topped by a fluffy cream cheese buttercream (that reminded us of Oreo cream filling), a sprinkling of Oreo crumbs and a wedge of cookie. I hope this one makes it onto the TL menu.

Notice the Oreo cookie crust on the wedge of Oh Oreo! 

cupcake at right. Its crispyness was a high point of the cupcake.

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough 

cupcake contained a generous filling of 

-- what else? -- cookie dough!

We also enjoyed the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, which featured chocolate cake with a cookie dough filling (well done -- this is hard to do because the dough tends to become one with the cake, but Tracy did a nice job of contrasting the textures), a luscious vanilla buttercream frosting and a garnish of mini-chocolate chips and a homemade mini chocolate chip cookie. The homemade cookie was a great touch -- no shortcuts in this kitchen. We all agreed as we sampled this bunch of cupcakes that Tracy's thoughfulness with each flavor is what makes them stand out from cupcakes done by other bakeries in the area. 

The Rolo was our least favorite of the new crop. The caramel frosting was too sweet for my taste, although I was the only one of the three of us who felt that way -- Kathy and Jayette both liked the icing. Tracy had baked a Rolo candy into yellow cake, and, unfortuantely, as we cut the cupcake into pieces we could all try, the entirety of the candy piece wound up on one of the segments, so I got the whole thing while Kathy and Jayette got none. Therefore, they missed a major part of the cupcake while I got a too-large ratio of Rolo to cake. Rolos aren't my favorite candy because I'm not a fan of hard, chewy caramel (I prefer the soft, flowy kind like in Caramello bars), so the mouthful of Rolo wasn't so great. I suspect that it would have been better had we each gotten equal parts of the filling. Regardless, we would likely pass on this one in the future (and go for an Oh Oreo!).

Finally, Tracy had thrown in a veteran of her menu, the Chocolate Peanut Butter. I expected to love this one, and I wasn't disappointed. The moist chocolate cake housed a center consisting of a Reese's peanut butter cup, which retained its texture quite well through the baking process. Up top was a dreamy chocolate-peanut butter buttercream and a mini-peanut butter cup garnish. This cupcake should definitely come with an extra shot of frosting on the side. Yum.

We also managed to tackle a bit of Kathy's Carrot from OMGosh. The colorful, nut-filled spice cake was, unfortunately, dry. Kathy and Jayette did, however, like the cream cheese icing, which featured a cheery frosting carrot. I wasn't as impressed with the frosting, though. Something about it, which I couldn't put my finger on, just didn't taste quite right. I'm still not sure what the problem was, but I know that, despite the cute carrot garnish, this is one I'll never need to try again.

I needed a few hours to digest and log a workout, but when I arrived home from work, I was ready to take a few bites from  my other two OMGosh cupcakes before I put the majority in the freezer. 

First up for a nibble was the Butterfinger. I didn't get too far into it, but it seemed to be yellow cake, maybe with some peanut butter in the batter, and a filling of melty Butterfinger candy. Mmmm. Piled on top was a swirl of peanut butter frosting crowned by a thin layer of chocolate frosting and Butterfinger crumbles. The only other Butterfinger cupcake I've had was from Heavenly Delight, and that was a much simpler interpretation -- yellow cake with chocolate frosting and candy crumbles. The HD version scored high on my cupcake meter, but while that one was Butterfinger in topping only, this one was Butterfinger from top to bottom, inside and out. 

In the interest of being a thorough blogger, I managed to choke down a few final cupcake bites -- these from   OMGosh's Chocolate Mint. I had fond memories of my last taste of OMGosh's phenomenally rich, milk- chocolately frosting (on its Snickers cupcake), and the mint-flavored frosting on this one was just as delicious. The chocolate cake was a bit on the dry side, but the frosting distracted me from that imperfection, as did the minty filling, which was a creamier imitation of the center of a York Peppermint Patty. Wow. I felt just like one of the people in those old, windy York TV commercials -- refreshed and blown away.