Note: CASH ONLY!
Last week, I spotted a new business on Capital Avenue, and at first glance it appeared to be an ice cream parlor.
However, it turns out that someone decided to open a cupcake specialty bakery a few doors up the cobblestone road from the famously overrated Fiori's Pizzeria, and the interiors are akin to a pink poodle; small and excruciatingly cute. Women will most likely love the place as well as the keen designs of the cupcakes themselves which range in size from regular to miniature. Le Cupcake Shoppe also sells cookies, cakes, and other assorted pastries, but aside from some cake pops that the person behind the counter (the owner?) threw in for free, they only had cupcakes for sale at the moment.
I took home bountiful baker's dozen of the micro cupcakes and a few of the normally-sized variety. They included the following: Red Velvet, S'more, Chocolate Potato Chip (!), Hot Chocolate, French Vanilla, and I cannot recall what the others were called at the moment. All of them were adorned with either a cream cheese icing or a buttercream. Some of the cake portions were a little on the dry side but most were up to the usual par of richness, and each of the icings of course made the cupcakes sing, hitting every sultry, velvety, dulcet note. The Hot Chocolate, my personal favorite of the batch, had a chocolate buttercream with sprinkles and a small marshmallow on top, evoking wintertime comfort personified, solidified. Although none of the others were duffers, an honorable mention must go to the expectedly brilliant salty/sweet smash-up of the winged Chocolate Potato Chip cupcakes. Aloft on golden wings of deep fried, ridged, mass-produced tuber, they fluttered into my beak like moths to a smoldering campfire after sunset.
Cake Pops, like cupcakes themselves, are not typically something I crave, but the chocolate one had an irresistibly fudgy quality (was that fondant?) to it that had me wishing for more.
Let's pray to the confectionery gods that Le Cupcake Shoppe sticks to the neighborhood like their treats did to my palate.