Heather recently suggested that I try out a New York bakery featured on Martha Stewart called Sweet Revenge. When my good friend (and fellow baked good connoisseur) Sariah came to town, it seemed like a great time to do it. After carefully tasting six different cupcakes, one word sums up my feelings.Eh.
It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good. Their cake had a tight crumb, giving it a pleasant, sink your teeth into it feeling when you took a bite. And both their dark and milk chocolate ganache frostings were the kind of thing you could eat by the pint while standing in front of your fridge in the middle of the night. Their buttercream, however, was way too sweet. Their vanilla/vanilla (or “Pure”) was overcooked, resulting in a tough, crunchy exterior. Their dark chocolate cake was so dry it crumbled to pieces when we tried to cut it for our taste test. And what they did to Red Velvet (making it pink and adding raspberries) was practically blaspheme. Even cream cheese frosting couldn’t save it, and let’s be honest, cream cheese frosting can save a lot of things.
The final judgment, however, came the next morning, when I got up hungry and freshly on a diet and wasn’t even tempted by the leftover vanilla cupcake sitting on the counter. In fact, it continued to sit there all day.
Not a good sign.
Sariah brought some cupcakes back to Heather in DC – I can’t wait to hear what she thinks of them.
First of all, I love Sariah and Janelle for helping me get a tasting of a cupcakery hundreds of miles away. It is always fun to see what is new and exciting in cupcakes!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Janelle. These guys are rustic, heavy, homemade, and swathed in grainy frosting. I loved their brown parchment fold liners. We laughed at their pirate-themed stickers. Their chocolate frostings were really stiff fudges by the time they got to me which made them very hard to eat.
I really enjoyed the vanilla cupcake called "Pure." Since I generally prefer light, moist cakes with either creamy or fluffy frosting, it's no surprise that I wasn't wetting my pants over these heavy, dry, enormous cupcakes. I will say, however, that I loved the flavor of their Mexican vanilla. Either it's extremely potent or they use a ton of it or both, and it is awesome! I've been craving one since. I've even looked online for Mexican vanilla. Yum!
I would just like all you bakeryies out there to know that it's really annoying when you add red food coloring to any old thing and call it a red velvet cupcake. My husband didn't even eat his full share of the so-called red velvet so you know something is up.
The real failing for me was their nondescript citrus cupcake. It tasted like buttered bread and nothing else.
Next time I visit Janelle, I'm going to sneak out and get another Pure. Magnolia's vanilla-vanilla is still the gold standard, but Pure was a worthy competitor!