The Cupcake Addict's Cupcake Collection

Mr Shuck called me while I was at the grocery store last weekend to let me know that Sugar Rush bakery was having a special cupcake to benefit Japan Earthquake relief.  I thought I should check it out.  Of course, I got a couple other flavors as well…

Cherry Blossom cupcake from Sugar Rush

I think that this was a vanilla cupcake with vanilla icing.  I didn’t get any other flavors.  It was very cute, but bland.  The icing seemed to be Italian meringue butter cream: very silky and smooth, not overly sweet.

Bit of Bliss from Sugar Rush Baking Co.

I think this was called “Bit of Bliss”…it seems like the closest one from their menu… I should have written it down.  The chocolate cake had nice chocolate flavor, but was a little dry.  The ganache it was dipped it was delicious and rich.  This one was my favorite.

Strawberry Lemonade from Sugar Rush Baking Co

I wasn’t overly thrilled with the Strawberry Lemonade cupcake.  The cake was okay.  It was lemony and fairly moist.  The icing wasn’t good at all.  It was too sweet and didn’t have much strawberry flavor.

Sugar Rush has decent cupcakes.  They aren’t something I’d go far out of my way for, but then it’s only a mile from my house.  They have good coffee and a play area for the children, so it’s always pretty busy.  It seems like a nice place to hang out.

On the way home from Portland, Mr Shuck and I made a small detour off of I-5 to try out a new cupcake shop.

I had a few problems with the shop itself.

• There were only 4 flavors.  I was told the other flavors weren’t “out yet”, which seemed a little strange for 2pm on a Monday.   One of them was red velvet, so that left only 3 flavors I could potentially eat.  Another flavor had bacon on it, so the vegetarianism eliminated that one.  The 3rd flavor had bright green icing, which eliminated it because of my dislike of artificial colorings.    I was left with chocolate, which I think was described as “truffle-y”.
• There were no labels on the cupcakes, so the counter person had to describe each one to me.  She was extremely pleasant, but if there had been a line… she would have had to repeat herself over and over needlessly.  I don’t expect anything fancy: eraser board or chalk board is fine and relatively inexpensive.
• The boxes didn’t have inserts to keep the cupcakes from falling over.  I understand this is a new store and maybe they didn’t want to invest yet…If I had waited until I got home, the cake would have been all over the place.

Positive points:

• They had minis available, although in only 1 flavor…guess which one?   This probably turns out to be a neutral point because it’s a problem point to me that there was only 1 flavor of minis.  The advantage of minis is that you can try a couple of flavors.
• They also had mini pies, although just apple.

The cupcake:

Yes, I photographed and ate this in the car....

I don’t remember how this cake was described other than “truffle-y”.  (If there had been a sign, I’m likely to have remembered the details…)  A favorable description would be “dense chocolate cake topped with fluffy chocolate butter cream and garnished with a truffle and hot pink decorations.”   My actual description:

The cake was fine.  It seemed like a German chocolate pound cake: very light chocolate flavor, very dense.  It hadn’t risen very much and the liners should have been filled up more so the cake would come up higher.  The cake was about 1/2 an inch below the level of the liner.  This made it extremely easy to remove the paper though…

The chocolate candy on top wasn’t very good.  It seemed like a truffle, but perhaps not a very good truffle… But then, for $2.25, is anyone really going to top a cupcake with a truffle that costs more than a few cents?

I didn’t really like the combination of hot pink accessories with the leopard print liner.  Maybe it’s stylish and haute cupcake couture, but I thought it was a little gaudy.  I’m opposed to sanding sugar in general because it doesn’t add to the flavor.  The other little hot pink things seemed to be chocolate candy covered sunflower seeds, but I’m not 100% sure about that.  They added crunch, I guess.  They might have also added salt…

The icing, while fluffy and smooth, was extremely SALTY.  I’m not sure if they use salted butter instead of unsalted or if this was intentional.  It was a little much.  I can’t tell you if the icing was richly flavored with chocolate because I couldn’t taste anything besides salt.

I don’t want to be negative about a new business, so I’m not posting the name… If you REALLY want to know, leave a comment and I’ll email you…