Out of Towners - Indianapolis' Flying Cupcake

I was in Indianapolis over the weekend and thought it'd be fun to pay a visit to their only cupcakery (as far as I know) - The Flying Cupcake.

They have an adorable storefront, and the inside is really cute and quaint, with some seating both inside and out for cupcake lovers to sit down and enjoy their treats. I picked up three flavors - Pretty In Pink, What's Up Doc, and Red Velvet Elvis. I'm not quite sure what the involvement of Elvis is with Red Velvet. DC's Hello Cupcake has a Velvet Elvis - Banana cake with Peanut Butter frosting - which is a play on the King's favorite sandwich.

Anyway, Mike (my other half) dove into What's Up Doc before I had a chance to snap a picture of it, but take a look:

I was baffled - how do you have a carrot cake with no carrots? Maybe they processed them, but you couldn't taste it either way. There was also a shortage on the spices...usually in carrot cake you expect to taste a lot of cinnamon, nutmeg, sometimes even a bit of ginger and clove, but there was none of that here. Really, I can't even pinpoint a flavor to compare this cake to - it was very bland. To top it off, they stuffed it full of raisens, which I despise. One of the worst carrot cakes we've ever had, we threw this in the trash.

Pretty in Pink, the strawberry cupcake, was very sugary and sweet. The cream cheese frosting is packed with little bits of real strawberries. While the frosting was absolutely delicious, the cake missed the mark. It had the consistency and flavor of a boxed mix, which was really disappointing because they could have done so much more with it. How about putting real strawberry chunks in the cake itself? Or maybe a strawberry filling would have helped. Mike ate the frosting off this one and threw the rest away.

After two big disappointments I was pleasantly surprised to bite into the Red Velvet Elvis and find something I've never seen anyone else do in Red Velvet - big chunks of chocolate chips! And it was GREAT! It doesn't sound like that novel of an idea - putting chocolate chips in cake - but in the dozens of Red Velvet cupcakes I've tasted I've never come across a bakery willing to put a spin on the classic. The cake was deep and rich, and the big chocolate chips were the perfect extra touch that made this cupcake impossible to set down. I wish I could have brought a box of them home to let you Red Velvet lovers try! Fantastic.

The Flying Cupcake has many other flavors that I'd like to try, like The Cheesecake Blues (blueberry cheesecake cupcake on a sugar cookie crust) and Pineapple Right Side Up (It's pineapple upside down (cup)cake, only smaller and flipped right-side up); next time I'm out there I'll have to drop by again. My recommendation? Next time any of you Washingtonian's have a business trip to Indy, venture to the outskirts of the city and pick up a Red Velvet Elvis from The Flying Cupcake!