Thursday, January 29, 2009

A Red Velvet Cupcakery Review

Last posting on Red Velvet Cupcakery for the day, I promise! I’m just excited for our upcoming meetup! I took some parts of the ModernDomestic's (Jenna Huntsberger) review of her experience with Red Velvet Cupcakery and posted them below for you guys to see!:
Photo courtesy of the ModernDomestic
"I tried three cupcakes on my visit: the coffee-flavored Morning Call, the Red Velvet, and the Peanut Butter Cup. Each was $3.25/piece or $36 for a dozen.
The cupcakes were well made, with the exception of a small technical difficulty. All the cupcakes I sampled had a hard, slightly bitter, crust on their tops, as if they’d been left in the oven too long. But that problem is easily fixable, and may just have been opening day jitters.
Photo courtesy of the ModernDomestic
My favorite cupcake, by far, was the Peanut Butter Cup - a chocolate cake topped with a slightly salty, rich peanut butter frosting. The cake was tender and had a deep chocolate flavor, but the frosting really stole the show. It had a fluffy texture, with a rich salty-sweet peanut butter flavor. I love the combination of chocolate and peanut butter together, and this cupcake was really to die for.
Photo courtesy of the ModernDomestic
The Red Velvet was also a strong contender - the cake was fluffy and tender, and had that deep red color of a proper red velvet cake. The cream cheese frosting was the right balance of tangy and sweet, with a smooth texture.
Photo courtesy of the ModernDomestic
The Morning Call, an espresso-chocolate cupcake with mocha buttercream, was my least favorite. I didn’t taste the espresso in the espresso-chocolate cake, although it had a rich chocolate flavor and tender crumb. The frosting tasted like a classic buttercream - it tasted strongly of butter, had an oily texture, and was overwhelmingly rich. To be fair, the mocha flavor was well balanced, and the richness and the texture are all things I’ve encountered in buttercreams before. But I’m not a huge fan of classic buttercreams, so my dislike of the Morning Call may be more a matter of personal taste than anything else.
Photo courtesy of the ModernDomestic
I was pretty happy with Red Velvet Cupcakery - just writing this makes me want to make a b-line for the store so I can get that Peanut Butter Cup cupcake again. But I also think that Red Velvet has some room to grow.
Red Velvet’s flavor combinations are classic, but seemed a little boring and expected - as though they took a gourmet dessert menu and adapted it for cupcakes. This isn’t a bad thing, but Red Velvet Cupcakery is competing with stores that are passionate about cupcakes, and which offer daily rotating menus in addition to seasonal offerings. Doing classic flavors well just isn’t enough to compete."
All around, great reviews so far for RVC! Have you meetup members have picked out which flavors you're going to chow down on?! I have!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, were you following me on Monday night? :) We went there before the Wizards/Suns game and got four to try. We knew we couldn't take them into the Verizon Center so we went to Potbelly's (GREAT sugar cookies, btw), shared a sandwich (to make it legit), and then ate them. We got the yellow cake/choc frosting, red velvet, mocha, and peanut butter. I agree with you about the pb frosting, it was very good although the cake was a little dry. Everything else was decent enough and I'll go again when I'm back down there. I wouldn't compare it to GC, but just glad to have it as an addition to the cupcakery mix.

veggievixen said...

isn't it sooooo delicious and adorable???

i was there on the grand opening-- so worth standing in the freezing cold for 1/2 an hour.