Mini Cupcakes Review

About a year ago, I bought a Groupon for a local cupcake bakery. It was still pretty new and I hadn't tried them yet. The newspaper's food columnist had raved about them. I love cupcakes, but we always got cake from our wedding cake baker. He does do cupcakes, but just regular chocolate and vanilla ones with the occasional seasonal flavor. I took the Groupon as a sign that I needed to check this place out, so I bought one. 
Well fast forward to last week when I still hadn't used the Groupon and it was going to expire. Since we were having dinner at my mother-in-law's on Thursday, I ran over to the baker (It's not far from our house) and finally used the Groupon. It was good for a dozen of their mini-cupcakes for which they are known. Since they had 12 different flavors of mini-cupcakes, I got one of each.

My mother-in-law and I split a few that night. While they are mini, they are not bite sized. Each cupcake was more like 4 bites for me.

Let's take a closer look at those flavors...

On the left is Cookies and Cream. It was the special of the week.  It was good. There were cookie pieces in the cupcake as well as the cookie crumbles in the frosting. It probably could have used more cookies in the batter to make it less like a plain cake.

On the right is Carrot Cake. I didn't eat this one at all. I don't like carrot cake, but my mother-in-law does. She said it was good, but kind of dry.

Left, Chocolate Raspberry - There was raspberry under the frosting, but I couldn't taste it very much. Then in my last bite, there was raspberry in the cupcake and it was good, but I wish it had been there for the whole cupcake. The frosting on this on was amazing. Very rich chocolate, almost like a ganache.

Right, Red Velvet - Confession: I've never had red velvet before. And frankly, I don't really need to have it again. I really don't see the point. It's not fully chocolate, just a touch. The cream cheese frosting was great, but the cake for me was just meh.

Top, Chocolate Peanut Butter - This was good. Chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. It was just the right amount of peanut butter for me. Sometimes these can get overly sweet, but I liked this one.

Bottom, Chocolate with Buttercream Frosting - Good chocolate cake, good frosting. Nothing special, but it was good. They have a great frosting to cake ratio.

Left, Snickerdoodle - This was one of my favorites! The cake was cinnamon sugar and then the buttercream icing had more cinnamon sugar on it. It was a great combination of flavors.

 

Here's a cross-section of the Snickerdoodle. You can see the awesome frosting to cake ratio here.

Right, Black Bottom - This was my mother-in-law's favorite out of the ones she tried. It's a brownie bottom with cream cheese and chocolate chips in the middle.

Left, Chocolate with Chocolate Icing - Again, the frosting was amazing. The sprinkles were unnecessary, as the frosting is so good on it's own. The cake was just typical chocolate cake.

Right, Marshmallow Cream Filled - This was OK. Not as good as those Hostess cupcakes, but probably has less chemicals!

Top, Strawberry - This is their best seller and I can see why! My other favorite! Strawberries not only in the frosting, but also in the cake. I would easily take a dozen of these! And they make regular cakes too!

Bottom, Yellow Cake with Buttercream Icing - This was good, but nothing special.

So, would I buy again from this bakery? Probably. I'd definitely get the Snickerdoodle and Strawberry cupcakes again. But for regular chocolate and yellow cupcakes, I'd probably stick with my usual baker.

Washington DC Vacation Recap Day 5

After spending the past couple days mostly inside at museums, it was time for a change. On our fifth day of vacation, we headed to the National Zoo to spend the day outdoors.

I love going to zoos, so I was excited about our destination for the day. We took the Metro to the Zoo stop and then it's a short walk of a couple of blocks. It's uphill though so it wasn't the easiest walk, but we saw lots of interesting buildings and homes and it was a nice day.

Once we arrived at the zoo, we dove right in. The National Zoo is the only Smithsonian facility we visited that did not provide free paper maps. You could buy one for $2, but we elected to skip that option. They do have signs with maps posted around the zoo, so you don't get lost, but it would have been nice to know where we were all the time.

The National Zoo has a nice variety of animals and we took our time walking around and visiting all of them. As I said, the weather was nice that day and it wasn't crowded at all.

Here are just a few of the animals we saw that day...



Elephants



Pandas! I was very excited about the pandas since this is only 1 of 4 zoos in the United States to have pandas. They were very cute and I took lots of pictures. Sadly, most of them didn't turn out well due to the poor lighting and the fact that pandas don't like to pose for pictures. We spent a lot of time watching this guy eat and we even made a second trip back to the pandas after we saw all the other animals.

 

Owls! The zoo actually has several different breeds of owls which was exciting because our local zoo only has one barn owl.



Orangutans - These guys were being very playful and entertaining.



Lots of lizards and other reptiles and amphibians



Lions and other big cats



And of course, Red Pandas! I took tons of pictures of this baby red panda and his parents. But again, poor lighting and movement meant not so great pictures. I spent a long time watching him explore and play. The red pandas are in a temporary exhibit in the Giant Panda's building while the Red Panda home is remodeled.



Sadly, this is probably the closest I'll ever get to touching a Red Panda.

I mentioned before that we tried to avoid buying food at the museums because it was horribly overpriced. We did get lunch at the zoo because we needed to keep our strength up for all the walking we were doing and there wasn't any place outside of the zoo to eat. (That we knew of anyway.) The food was typical zoo food, but it was what we needed and we got souvenir cups to take home.

After the zoo, we took the Metro to Dupont Circle in DC. Prior to our trip, I had been researching places to eat and I looked into some cupcake shops. One of them was called Hello Cupcake and it sounded good. My friend Tricia had been to DC a couple weeks before our trip and she checked it out. She recommended them, so we decided to visit and pick up some cupcakes to enjoy later.

The shop was really cute and they had a good assortment of flavors. We got 4 different flavors to try. It was really hard not to eat them right then, but I did manage to get them back to the hotel safely.



Our flavors were...

Peanut Butter Blossom - Chocolate cupcake topped with peanut butter frosting and a chocolate kiss. M picked this one. The cupcake had a great chocolate flavor and was very moist, but the peanut butter frosting was a bit rich for my tastes. I did like them together, but it was a good thing we split this one!

Heart of Darkness - Devil's food cupcake topped with chocolate ganache-based frosting and real chocolate chip sprinkles. OMG, this was good! I LOVE chocolate and this delivered. The frosting was thick and rich. Luckily I had snagged some bottles of milk from the free breakfast and stored them in our fridge. I definitely needed milk to help wash this one down. Only eat this one if you are serious about your chocolate.

Prima Donna - Chocolate cupcake topped with strawberry buttercream frosting. M's pick. This one was all M's. I tried it, but the strawberry buttercream frosting was too sweet for me.

You Tart! - Lemon cupcake topped with lemon cream cheese frosting. My favorite! As much as I liked the Heart of Darkness, this one was tops for me. The fresh lemon taste was refreshing and not overpowering at all. The frosting was delicious. I savored every bite of this one and I crave it all the time. This made me realize just how much I love a good lemon cupcake.

We only have one day left in DC, what will we do next?