In the past two weeks, I’ve visited Hello Cupcake twice. In the beginning (a year ago to the day), Hello Cupcake was one of my favorites because of the interesting flavors and convenient location. Unfortunately, I think their quality and recipes have changed and gone downhill.
Most recently, I’ve eaten the Bailey’s/Guinness cupcake (March), Pick Me Up, Velvet Elvis, Root Beer Float, and Pastry Chef’s Special (Almond frosting with vanilla cake). All of the cakes were too dry and the icing too sweet, but I’ll highlight the two that stood out the most below:
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Root Beer Float Cupcake
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I missed out on this cupcake flavor last summer, and as a result I think I built it up more than I should have. It tasted like a pumpkin muffin, but instead of pumpkin, it was licorice flavored. The frosting had a hardened crust on the outside that gave way to a soft, sickeningly sweet inside. I could see where they were going with this, but it was entirely too sweet. I actually wondered if I was going to get sick from eating this. I scraped the icing off (read: the cupcake fell icing first onto my desk while being eaten), but without the icing, the cake was too dry.
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Pastry Chef’s Special (8/17/09)
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This cupcake was being offered with either a vanilla or chocolate cake and I figured the vanilla cake would complement the almond frosting the best. I liked the smell of the cupcake and the added almond slivers on top. The icing itself was hard and looked like a supermarket cupcake. It was ridiculously hard and did nothing to offset the dryness of the cake. I was expecting a nice, nutty flavor from this, but it tasted strongly of almond paste (marzipan) that had probably been sitting on the shelf for a few winters. This made me wonder if the pastry chef actually tasted this before calling it their “special” of the day! After breaking through the icing crust, I proceeded to slowly eat this over the span of an hour, balanced out with a bland latte. This was the closest I’ve ever been to a diabetic coma, and not the good kind. I was seriously sick after eating this.
I also tried their latte and it was alright. The coffee tasted a bit burnt and on it’s own, the latte was flavorless and needed some sugar. Fortunately, I had plenty of sugar to go with it in the cupcake that I purchased.
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