| rev:text
| - You've got to hand it to Candace Nelson; she knows how to bake up palpable buzz. You need look no further than the perpetual line at Sprinkles Cupcakes in Scottsdale. If only the cupcakes were as good as the hype. Unfortunately, they are not.
It comes down to style over substance. Sprinkles Cupcakes has a great look from the windows frosted with the outlines of cupcake wrappers to the spare wood display racks. The aesthetic is clean, modern and restrained. The cupcakes are impeccable in terms of their appearance. The bakery even offers an interlocking cardboard stand with optional ribbon trim to create a display for a special event. The graphics and design are top-notch.
While we may eat with our eyes first, the disappointment creeps in once you move beyond the visual and taste the cupcakes. At best, they're okay. In order to give Sprinkles a fair shake, I pre-ordered a dozen online. Anyone can order a minimum of a dozen cupcakes online with 24 hours advance notice. The real advantage of the pre-order is that you get to skip the mayhem of the line. It's worth it to walk right up to the counter and pick up your prepaid order without having to stand in the chaotic line and watch the crowd's tension level rise as they run out of flavor after flavor.
As a home baker who makes everything from scratch, I found Sprinkles Cupcakes to be resoundingly underwhelming. Their signature Red Velvet Cake was a real disappointment. The cake itself was bitter and sour at the same time. It also had an unpleasant lingering aftertaste. Actually, all of the cupcakes I tried with chocolate cake had the same bitter and sour taste combined with the lingering unpleasant aftertaste. It was almost like the chocolate cakes weren't mixed properly before they were baked. If it has been one or two cupcakes, I would have given them the benefit of the doubt; however, this place takes the concept of bittersweet chocolate to a new and very strange level. The Carrot cupcake is also misnamed; it should be called a Spice cupcake instead because the presence of any carrot is nearly undetectable. In fairness, the Coconut cupcake was the best of the 12 sampled. The taste of both the cake and the icing was great; the cake itself was a bit stiff and dry (but less than the others sampled).
In terms of texture, the 12 cupcakes sampled varied from "sturdy" (e.g., nothing close to tender) to dry and crumbling apart. This is definitely not what I expect from a premium bakery. Some other reviewers have commented that the cupcakes are too expensive. Clearly they haven't been to a grocery store lately to check on the price of butter, eggs, sugar, cream, cream cheese, etc. The cupcakes are fairly priced for the premium ingredients that Sprinkles uses. However, those ingredients are not falling into the most adept hands. Perhaps this is an issue with a newly trained staff.
For the money and the pleasure of the experience, enjoy an Ooey Gooey from Tammie Coe instead of Sprinkles. Tammie's cupcakes are the real deal and are everything that Sprinkles aspires to be. Just be sure to allow Tammie's cupcakes to return to room temperature before you devour them. They're sublime while the cupcakes at Sprinkles are serviceable at best.
Sprinkles Cupcakes was worth trying once to see what all the hype was about. However, I won't be back.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)