This morning I went into the city to do a couple of errands. As I was walking down the street I passed a few girls who were carrying small white boxes with what appeared to be pictures of cupcakes on the side. I didn’t have enough of a chance to have a great look at these boxes I was positive that I had seen shapes resembling cupcakes! A month or so ago, one of my friends had told me that she had seen an advertisement in the employment section of the newspaper looking for staff for an new cupcake shop and so with that in the back of my mind I set out to see if I could find this elusive cupcake shop. My eyes had not fooled me and I didn’t get very far until I stumbled upon suspected shop. Cutie Cups is the first cupcake shop in our little city, and as it happens, today was their opening day!
The shop, which is situated in our mall is small and is set up more like a walk-in bar with a little tiled area in front of the glass display cabinet which houses the little delights! The walls are candy striped purple and green, too cute! You can buy mini cupcakes or regular sized ones. I decided that I had to get some; a day-early birthday treat to myself you could say!
I chose six mini cupcakes to share with my sister; the Raspberry Cream, Red Velvet, Vanilla, Peppermint Swirl, Jaffa and Cookies & Cream.
Red Velvet- I had never tried a Red Velvet before and having read about them before and their apparent delightfulness I can't really say that there was a "wow" factor to it. Mind you, we cut our cupcakes in half and so I only really had a morsel to try and the frosting was so sweet I couldn't really taste the cake. Maybe I will give it a second tasting.
Raspberry Cream- This one was definitely one of our agreed favourites! A lovely berry flavour which worked really well with the chocolate cake. Delish! The little butterfly candy topping the frosting was cute and tasty too!
Peppermint Swirl- Another goody, I love the peppermint chocolate combination! The icing was a lovely soft green and topped with a chocolate lace sliver.
Jaffa- My sister's favourite! When she popped her half in her mouth it looked like a small explosion was happening inside! It was very tasty, but the orange cream was a little bit too sweet for me, but still very yummy.
Vanilla- I didn't rate this one. Visually it was cute, with a tiny teddy cookie stuck in the vanilla frosting but it was way too sweet for me and didn't really have a distinct vanilla flavour to it. However, we must keep in mind that I am more of a chocolate girl anyway.
Cookies and Cream- Just like the vanilla but with Oreo crumbs on top which you couldn't really taste. It would have been awesome if there were Oreo crumbs through the frosting. I was a bit disappointed with this cupcake as it was described in the brochure as a "Chocolate base with Oreo infused butter cream" but in fact it was a vanilla base with no infusion happening. This the only real disappointment because the cake really didn't match up to the description...
Overall Rating:
I will definitely go back because there are a couple of flavours that I would like to try that were not available today, specifically the Coconut Passion and Honeycomb. The cakes were a bit dry but that has been my general experience with "Australian" cupcakes. These were the best that I have had so far in Australia though. I have also tried the ones from Little Cupcakes in Melbourne which didn't really go down to well. Of course, any cupcake I try will always be hard to match up against the best ones that I have ever had from Cupcakes by Heather & Lori in Vancouver (my favourite flavours there were the Caramella and Denman, my mouth waters just thinking about them!).
Cupcakes definitely have a special place in my heart and are one of my favourite things to share on special occasions such as birthdays!
What is your favourite cupcake flavour? Do you have a perfect cupcake recipe?
