Cupcake Throwdown

So much has been going on recently that for a while I completely forgot about Kyle and my unofficial "cupcake throwdown" one evening back at the end of January.

We'd been inspired after reading some online reviews of some of the bakeries in Princeton, in particular The House of Cupcakes and The Bent Spoon. We liked the ones from the House of Cupcakes but a number of the reviewers had compared them unfavourably with the Bent Spoon, so we decided that we would get cupcakes from each location and then have a "taste-off" to compare them ourselves (while also enjoying a sweet treat). The Little Chef bakery doesn't appear to do cupcakes but we also got some pastries from there.

Here's what we got:


The cupcakes from each place are quite different - for me, the House of Cupcakes seems to focus on the cupcake icing, which is deliciously (almost indecently) sugary sweet and which I loved to just let melt in my mouth. The actual sponge is a little bit bland and seems to act mainly as a vehicle to carry the icing, but it's not bad and is quite light.

In contrast the Bent Spoon cakes seemed a bit heavier, and the sponge was moist and tasty while the icing was a bit stiffer and not as sweet. The flavours in The Bent Spoon cupcakes also seemed to be a bit more complex. However overall I personally preferred the cakes from the House of Cupcakes slightly more.

The pastries from The Little Chef were also really really delicious. Well, I'm a sucker for puff pastry and cream (and as an aside, it was a source of amusement to me as a Brit that in the UK Little Chef is a chain of motorway restaurants). Also - as a postscript - a few days later on our way to meet the lawyer Kyle got some more cupcakes, this time from La Bonbonniere, which I think were better than either of the others. But that doesn't mean that I thought the others were bad, and of course it's always good to make up your own mind where food is concerned. Go forth and taste for yourself!