Friday Fieldtrip to review cupcakes at, The Shoppe, Lovely Confections Bakery, Posh Pastries, and Mulberries

My daughter Laura was in town and she, my friend Gina and I decided to take a
Friday Fieldtrip. My daughter is a pastry chef so we were excited to have a professional with us for our outing to 4 different cupcake shops/ bakeries. Yep, 4 bakeries in 3 hours. The thought of cupcakes makes me feel a bit ill after taste testing all afternoon, but here are my thoughts on each bakery. If you want a different perspective on this trip head on over to Gina's blog.

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Our first stop was in Parker, CO at a bakery called Posh Pastries. Here is a link to their cupcake menu. This bakery serves many different kinds of pastries not just cupcakes. There is no seating here so we got into the car and broke open the brown box that was tied with darling pale blue raffia, (Cute presentation)
only to find that the cupcakes are kept in a refrigerated case. A cold cupcake will taste dry and flavorless because the butter is in solid form. They really need to be at room temperature to eat. We patiently waited, NOT!!
We each took a bit and THEN decided to wait a few minutes for them to warm up.

• Caramel Injected Carrot Cake- Their signature carrot cake, injected with homemade caramel topped with cream cheese icing. This was a moist cake but lacked the nuts that, to me, make a carrot cake. The seasoning was a bit bland, it could have used a bit more cinnamon and spice. The caramel injection made the center extra moist and had great flavor. The cream cheese icing was heavy but had good flavor. Grade: C+
  
• Chocolate Fudge- Rich chocolate cake filled with milk chocolate fudge ganache and topped with fudge icing- This cake was a bit dense and very rich. The fudge ganache was heavy as was the fudge icing. It did have good chocolate flavor and could be perfect for a chocoholic. Grade B- or an A if you LOVE chocolate.
  
• Banana Foster- Banana cake injected with our homemade caramel, then filled with vanilla bean custard and topped w/ cream cheese icing- This was a wonderful banana cake, with a heavier texture of banana bread with loads of flavor and a banana bread consistency. The caramel center really accented the banana cake and it had the same cream cheese icing as the carrot cake. This was our favorite from this bakery. Grade: A-
• Vanilla Bean Dream- A moist vanilla cake filled with rich Vanilla bean custard topped with Vanilla buttercream. This is a good cupcake but not a great cupcake. It had good vanilla taste but still didn't amaze us. Grade: B
  

We then headed north to downtown to hit 3 bakeries on Colfax.

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We began at Mulberries Cake Shop. I'm not even going to give you the address because you shouldn't go.
The first thing that my daughter noticed was that there was no way they could bake in this shop because they didn't have enough flour and sugar and sure enough, they bake off site and bring the product in. The cupcakes were in a case and ever single one had neon colored icing on it.

They looked festive but I'm not a fan of the chemical taste from too much food coloring. In this case, the chemical taste from the food coloring helped cover up the fact that they don't use real butter for their buttercream, it is the fake butter"creme" that they buy in a tub. I hate the coating that forms in your mouth when you eat this stuff. We all agreed that the cake tasted like it was from a cake mix. The vanilla was dry and tasteless and the strawberry was no better. We each took one bite and threw them away. Grade-F
We wouldn't go back to this bakery if you paid us to!!!

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Next up was Lovely Confections Bakery. 1489 Steele St., Denver, CO 80206 at the corner of Steele and Colfax

This quaint shop is cozy and made me feel like I was at my grandma's house. It's a great place to bring a book and sit for a while. Cozy chairs and an inviting feel make this a wonderful shop. The owner, Porche Lovely, bakes all her items in small batches throughout the day from scratch. She uses all natural ingredients, many of them organic. She also tries to use as many local ingredients as she can. Her cupcakes are true comfort food. The texture of the cupcakes is not as light as a cake but not too dense either and her cupcake to frosting ratio is perfect.

• Vanilla with Vanilla Frosting- Perfect vanilla flavor and a buttery creamy vanilla frosting Grade: A-
• Strawberries and Cream- The cake had a mild strawberry flavor which we thought could be a little stronger but the combination of the cake and vanilla frosting was very good. Grade: B+

• Bees Knees- A lavender cake with a honey frosting. This one just missed the mark for us. The lavender flavor was too overpowering and the honey flavor was missing. Grade: D
• Coconut- This had a subtle coconut flavor to the cake with vanilla frosting topped with coconut. This was a nice coconut cupcake. Grade: B+
• Red Velvet- This is a really nice red velvet cake with just the right amount of chocolate. The cream cheese frosting is just a tad on the heavy side but has good flavor. Grade B
• Carrot with Cream Cheese Frosting- This is what carrot cake should be, nutty, with coconut and carrots that you can see in the cake. Nicely balanced spices and the perfect texture for carrot cake. The cream cheese frosting has good flavor but is a bit too heavy for my taste. Grade: A-

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We saved the best for last!!! Our final stop was to a hip, urban shop called-The Shoppe. 3103 East Colfax Avenue Denver, CO 80206(St.Paul + Colfax)

This is a must visit bakery if you are ever in the Denver Area.

It is a cupcake shop and a cereal bar all rolled into one. They serve a waffle brunch and have scones, muffins and other AM pastries. The bakery itself is very modern and comfortable with white tables that have silk wheat grass inserts, and some comfortable chairs in the window. They even use hot pink bakery boxes! Their tag line is Don't Be a Hater, Eat a Cupcake which they've printed in hot pink on T-Shirts, bibs and panties for sale in the bakery and at their Etsy shop.

Keep in mind that I am not a huge fan of wild and crazy flavors in my comfort food but The Shoppe converted me to the deliciousness of a visit to the wild side. , This bakery has so many cupcake flavors that it was really hard to choose which to get. We were thrilled to find that, in addition to full size cupcakes, they have mini cupcakes of each flavor which prevented us from dying from sugar overload. When we first looked into the case, we were initially worried that the frosting to cupcake ratio was very unbalanced, with huge swirls of frosting on each one, as youc an see in this photo from their gallery, but we couldn't have been more wrong.

Their frosting was so light, fluffy, creamy and flavorful we could have had more. Their cake is also what cake should be, a nice light crumb. Perfection!!

• Mini Red Velvet- Perfect!!! Perfect flavor and the cream cheese frosting is the best we've ever tasted. It is so light, silky and flavorful without being at all heavy. Grade: A
• Mini Rocky Road- A rich chocolate cake with caramel, marshmallow and nuts. Yummy!- Grade: A

• Nutella- Heaven- A deep chocolate cake with nutella filling and a chocolate hazelnut frosting, topped with chopped hazelnuts. Delicious!! Grade: A
• Peanut Butter Chocolate- This tasted like a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup- Need I say more?!!!- Grade A
• Maple Cinnamon Banana Cupcake! OM Gosh! So Good! A really flavorful cinnamon banana cake with the most amazing maple frosting on top. Grade: A

The Shoppe also carries Vegan cupcakes and Gluten Free Cupcakes for those with dietary restrictions.

They have special items and activities for kids too. Check out their Story Time and Crafts for kids every Saturday from 12pm to 1pm and their Signature Surprise Cupcake
It’s a cupcake + present all in one!Each jumbo size surprise cupcake has a Kid Robot zipper pull or keychain inside. I want one!!!

You can even follow them on Twitter. It is a must visit bakery and as soon as we're ready for another cupcake we'll be returning to sample other flavors.

It may be a while before we're ready to review another bakery but who knows where our next Friday Fieldtrip will take us!

C'est Chic Cupcakes Review

My friend Gina from "My Own Brand of Crazy" and I are obsessed with cupcakes. We have been visiting local cupcake shops in hopes of finding the perfect cupcake. The problem is that we both want a lighter fluffier cake part than we are finding. The cupcakes that we tried today were from a brand new shop called C'est Chic Cupcakes that opened yesterday in Littleton, CO. We each got 4 cupcakes to "test". Here are the ones that I chose.

Clockwise from top: In brown paper- Carrot Cake, New Orleans Lemon, Chocolate Orange, Creme Brulee

They were very good! The cake is still a bit too dense for my preference, but they're better than some other cupcake bakeries we've tried. That aside, the cupcakes are amazing. My favorite was the chocolate orange cupcake which has a deep rich chocolate cake with a perfect buttercream. The buttercream has orange zest and an unexpected orange blossom oil which gives it a light floral undertone. Different but sublime!
The New Orleans Lemon cupcake has a light lemon flavored cake with a light traditional cream cheese frosting and a pool of lemon curd on the top that gave it it's lemony taste. The Creme Brulee cupcake has a vanilla bean cake with tons of vanilla flavor, a vanilla bean whipped cream icing and a caramelized sugar disk perched on top, delicious. The Carrot Cake cupcake has a traditional carrot cake with the perfect amount of nutmeg and spice and is topped with a fluffy cream cheese frosting.

The shop has 7 different flavors each day on a rotating basis. They have premium flavors like Caramel Apple, Black Forest, Bananas Foster, Pineapple Upside Down and some out there flavors like Jasmine Green Tea, Port Wine, and Chai Tea. Skeptical, I tried a mini cupcake sample of the Chai Tea and it was fabulous, nice spice notes and a vanilla undertone. They are open every day except Tuesday and closed each day from 2 to 4pm??.

These are the things I would change.

1. They only have samples of the flavors from the day before. They use up their leftover batter each evening to make samples for the next day. That doesn't help me decide which flavors I wanted to buy today. I really wanted to try the Port Wine cupcake but wasn't willing to buy a whole cupcake that I might not have liked. As I said earlier, I sampled the Chai Tea cupcake and it was great. I would have loved to have bought a large one today but it was a flavor from yesterday and I don't live close enough to go back next Wednesday. Bummer.
2. Closed from 2 to 4? Why??
3. I'd like to see a basic vanilla and a basic chocolate cupcake available each day in addition to their premium flavors. Sometimes you just want a plain old cupcake.
4. The flavors are on a rotating basis with no daily standards to count on.
These small nitpicks are not enough to keep us away from this shop whenever we're in that area of town.