Cupcakes.

I don’t eat them often, but I have always enjoyed them. I have never made them from scratch, and have even recently made some from a box. Yes, I know – shame!!

This Spring, I plan to explore the world of the springy treat with gusto!!

The Plan: Visit a few different gourmet cupcake establishments, and see what it takes to be a delicious gourmet cupcake. Then, try my hand at making some. I am enlisting the help of some of my girls (and, undoubtedly, my guinea pig J) and we will all figure out what all the fuss is about!

My first stop was at a wee location tucked inside one of the buildings in the Distillery District, The Sweet Escape.

Being a smaller shop, they don’t have hundreds of cupcakes on hand. That said, I didn’t have any trouble finding exactly what I wanted to try. I narrowed it down to two: Red Velvet and Café Mocha. Before you start to judge – I didn’t eat them both myself!!! I split them with J (he deserves it!).

• Red Velvet – nice light cocoa cake, with a rich cream cheese frosting

• Café Mocha – rich chocolatey cake, with a delicious espresso buttercream frosting and topped with an espresso bean

I enjoyed both of these quite a bit, but my vote has to go with the Café Mocha. I prefer its richer chocolate over the light cocoa taste of the Red Velvet, and I’m a sucker for coffee infused anything! The icings on both were rich, creamy and nicely flavoured.  Definitely a great start to my adventure!

But it doesn’t end there. I had to try a new (to me) tasty treat.

Macarons

I’ve been told that cupcakes are on their way “out”. That’s pretty funny. What’s supposedly coming up in popularity is the french macaron, which I believe because I’ve been seeing them everywhere. Having never tried one before, I thought this would be a good opportunity. I read that they are French macaroons, which led me to believe that they were full of coconut (even though I couldn’t see any evidence of it on first glance). Let me reassure you, these are NOTHING like the coconut-filled macaroons that we have here in Canada. The coconut ones are commonly found in Scotland, North America and Germany and really don’t taste anything like the French macaron.

This was heavenly – light, crispy meringue outer shell, a soft and chewy middle, with a fine nuttiness. I instantly regret buying only one. I didn’t even share it with J.

Is this the beginning of the end for me? Will I decide that cupcakes are an appropriate food item for every meal? Not likely. But I think this is going to be a fun Spring!!

🙂
S