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Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Thing 144: Georgetown Cupcake

It's Cupcake Madness! Click here for the bracket and the judging sheet. Check out previous contenders Red Velvet, Couture Cupcakes, Cakelove, Hello Cupcake and Baked & Wired.


Georgetown Cupcake?  More like Georgetown Fraudcake!*

People, it is time to stop the madness.  You are waiting in line for these...these...globs of sugar and artificial color that I can't even bring myself to call cupcakes.  Stop waiting in line!  Use that time to write a poem or stroll down by the canal.  Or if you want a cupcake, go to any of the other cupcakeries in this bracket!  Save yourselves!!

Ok, so I'm being a bit dramatic.  But only a bit.  These puppies ain't good.

We wanted to order a couple of the 'control' cupcakes -- vanilla cake with chocolate frosting -- that were sitting out on the counter, looking lovely, but they wouldn't let us.  The counter cupcakes were for show, not to be sold.  So, we waited in line for twenty minutes, weren't sold the cupcakes we wanted and then finally were granted the privilege of buying two chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting, one red velvet and one 'very berry' cupcake.

These cupcakes are very pretty.  I'll give them that.  But how do they taste?  Bad! The vanilla frosting was gloppy and the cake tasted like it came from a box.  But the most offensive part?  The dyed purple frosting of the very berry cupcake and its distinctly chemical, burn-the-back-of-your-throat aftertaste.  You know how you make berry frosting?  By putting berries in it.  Not by chemically dying it purple.

These cakes scored below average across the board, but especially in the icing category.  Overall score?  2.3!  .2 points less than Red Velvet!  Georgetown Cupcake decidedly does not make it into the Tasty Two.

So, for those of you playing along at home, you'll see that it's Hello Cupcake and Cakelove in the Tasty Two...But.  You know how I mentioned that the bracket was flawed?  The problem with the bracket is that the best match up came in the Sweet Six of Western Bracket.  Both Baked & Wired and Hello Cupcake could beat Cakelove pretty handily, and where's the drama in that?So...in order to truly find the best cupcake, we revisited Baked & Wired and Hello Cupcake for the final round.  Who will win the final match up?  You'll have to stay tuned!!

*Thank you, Alan!

Two years ago: my review of the War Room.

5 comments:

Alicia said...

i think what makes a cupcake good is the frosting. and i think that the so-called "buttercream" frosting that's on the "cupcakes" at cakelove is horrendous. that stuff just makes me want to puke. if you want real buttercream frosting, find the recipe by barefoot contessa for her chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. now there's some good frosting.

j said...

Agreed. I don't know why Cakelove was even included. YUCK.

cleone said...

I couldn't disagree with you more. I have tasted cupcakes from LA to NYC to San Diego to Salt Lake to DC and by far my favorite cupcake comes from Georgetown Cupcake. I knew nothing of their popularity when last December '08 I happened to be visiting Georgetown. After a long search for a parking space near Dean and Deluca I just happened to find a spot on M street in front of Georgetown Cupcake. As I locked up my car I noticed the store and with a smile on my face I thought "Great! I love cupcakes!" So I wandered in, only a 5 minute wait, and to my wonderous delight I enjoyed the most scrumditiliumous red velvet cupcake I had tasted in my 53 years on earth. My only complaint is that they are too small!!

Teacac said...

I second Cleone's comment. I frequent Georgetown Cupcake, and have both personally seen money dropped onto the display cupcakes, and heard other customers who don't realize they are display complain about the lack of sanitation. We unfortunately live in a country (of which Georgetown Cupcake is in the very political center) where the fact that they can't sell those cupcakes is not the fault of the company at all.
And can you blame them for running out of the cupcakes you wanted? Its not their fault they're so popular :)

dc365 said...

Here's the thing, I can fault them for tasting like chemical dye red 32. These cupcakes just didn't taste good!!