Spring fever (and frosting)

When I stepped out my front door this morning and realized it was so warm at 8 a.m. that I didn't need a coat, I knew it was going to be the perfect day to sample a set of spring-themed cupcakes from TLCuppycakes. I had made arrangements for owner Tracy Cowee to drop them off, and she arrived mid-morning with the five springy cupcakes, including two brand-new creations for the Easter season.

Tracy's presentation never disappoints. This quintet was such a treat for the eyes that I hated to destroy them by eating them. 

Since I had ordered a quintet, I recruited my coworkers and fellow tasters Kathy Rem, Jayette Bolinski and Robin Desai to help me sample them. 

First up was the What's Up Doc. (You might be able to guess that it was carrot cake.) This one wasn't our favorite of the bunch. We thought the cake was on the dry side, although the spicy flavoring was just right. We loved the delicate cream cheese filling and the cream cheese buttercream frosting crowned with a cheery swirl of orange. Had the cake been moister, this one would have been a hit. 

The Sunshine Superman, a sweet-and-sour concoction topped by a fresh lemon slice, perked us up. The light lemon filling perfectly complemented the tangy lemon cake, and we loved that the flavor was obviously natural -- no artificial lemon in this cupcake. The subtle vanilla-lemon buttercream frosting was, literally, the icing on the cake.

My favorite of the day was also the simplest -- White Wedding Day, a white cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and little white candy "pearls" as a garnish. The cake was incredibly moist, and the addition of a light vanilla filling earned it extra points on our yum meter. The buttercream frosting was luscious. (A great comparison cupcake for the White Wedding Day is Cafe Moxo's I Do!, which I tried a couple weeks ago. I loved everything about it except the oversize, overly crunchy "pearls" used as a garnish. The smaller, softer "pearls" on the White Wedding Cake were so much better.) Overall, we felt this one was perfect, with just the right amount of vanilla flavor throughout, and would be the ideal choice for a tower of wedding cupcakes. When I finished my quarter, I wanted to steal Kathy's just to prolong my taste buds' delight a bit more.

We had decided to save the fanciest cupcakes for last, but we couldn't resist the Cadbury Cream Egg any longer, so we attacked that one next. (Robin had been looking forward to it all day.) We loved the idea and appearance of this one, but the taste experience didn't quite match up to the vision for us. The chocolate cake and vanilla cream frosting were good, and we liked the egg-white-and-yolk effect of the frosting and the mini-Cadbury egg perched on top. The problem was that the Cadbury egg baked into the cake remained hard and didn't blend well with the cake and creamy filling. The effect of the baked-in chocolate egg reminded us of the Rolo cupcake we tried from TL earlier this winter. The chewy Rolo inside the cake didn't soften and made biting into the cupcake a bit awkward. We did, however, love the creativity of both the Cadbury and the Rolo, and we salute Tracy for her adventurous baking spirit. 

The final cupcake turned out to be the grand finale: The Coconut Creme Bird Nest. This one charmed us immediately with its green-tinted coconut and pastel candy eggs. In this case the taste exceeded our expectations. The white cake and vanilla frosting each delivered a subtle taste of coconut, and the thorough placement of flavor left us thoroughly impressed. Some of us crowned this one the winner among the five, although it was second place for me, after White Wedding Cake. 

Our TL Cuppycakes group tastings are becoming a tradition, and it's one that I hope we can continue until we make our way through the TL menu. To browse the choices, visit http://www.tlcuppycakes.com/Flavor-Menu-and-Ordering.html.

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.