End of July Cupcakes

Dare I say it, I think I may take a brief hiatus from cupcakes for the month of August. There will be the exception when we go to Ocean City at the end of the month, but I have gotten very into lifting at the gym and want to see how I feel when I cut them out for a little while. There is no way on this earth that I could do it permanently though. No way, no how. In the meantime, I will be eating 45 calorie popsicles for my sugar fix.

With that said, I have two cupcake reviews today from two places in the city that had been on my list to try. The first is Sweet 27, a gluten free bakery located near the Johns Hopkins University campus. I had not stopped here yet because my work hours did not jive with when they were open, but this past Monday morning several of us went out to breakfast after work at one of my favorite breakfast places in the city, Slainte, and by the time we were done they were open.

Before I get to the bakery, let me just take a moment to wax poetic about Slainte's glorious Eggs Benedict. It's so good that I never order anything else, nor have I found a place that does it as well as here, even places that offer it with crabmeat. Everything is cooked and seasoned to perfection on the plate and I always clean mine! And wash it down with their bottomless mimosas which are also delicious. It is truly a treat.

Fortunately Sweet 27 was right on my way home and not out of the way at all. I was interested in trying these gluten free cupcakes because I have had quite a few gluten free things that were great at a friend's house.

I picked the red velvet, the vanilla, the chocolate peanut butter, and the chocolate strawberry. I think my favorite of the bunch was the red velvet. The cake was pretty moist and the frosting was creamy with a nice cream cheese flavor. They also don't glom on too much frosting, always a plus. I was a little disappointed with the vanilla, the cake was kind of dry and the frosting tasted more like cream cheese than buttercream. The chocolate peanut butter I only had a bite of because I bought it for Justin, but the chocolate cake was very chocolate-y and moist and the peanut butter almost tasted like natural peanut butter, which was good to me but if that's not your thing I wouldn't recommend it. The chocolate strawberry had strawberry chunks in the batter and again I thought this one was just okay. I think I just wasn't in the mood to eat that particular flavor of cupcake.

The second place I visited Wednesday after being called in from 7a-11a. I had tried to go to Oooh So Sweet before but they had been closed unexpectedly. Fortunately they were open yesterday and I popped in. This bakery offers quite a few flavors every day and you mark what you want with a dry erase marker on a laminated sheet. They then disappear to the back, and I'm pretty sure they frost everything fresh since there is no case in the front.

Here I chose Blue Velvet, Banana, Ice Cream Sundae, and Sugar Cookie. All around these cupcakes were moist. The Ice Cream Sundae was a chocolate cake studded with chocolate chips and very tasty, and the top was a vanilla frosting with hardened hot fudge, rainbow sprinkles, and a maraschino cherry. The cake on the Banana tasted truly like the fruit, but the frosting was yellow buttercream that wasn't as flavorful as I was expecting. The same went for the Sugar Cookie and Blue Velvet. The Ice Cream Sundae was definitely my favorite out of the batch.

Wish me luck with my month without cupcakes! It's definitely going to be challenging but I'm keeping my fingers crossed I can do it!