Today’s sample: Green Tea/Berry, Cherry Pomegranate, and Chai
Green Tea Berry: Bland. Neither the icing nor the cake tasted of green tea, unless green tea is totally lacking flavor. (I don’t normally drink green tea. Mr Shuck just informed me that green tea is virtually tasteless, so the cupcake is accurate, I guess.) The blueberry glaze wasn’t strongly flavored either. Rating: ♥
Cherry Pomegranate: The black cherry cake was okay; a few flecks of cherry in a vanilla cake. The icing was horrible. I tasted a sample of this icing at the shop a few weeks ago and liked it: light pink with a slight fruity flavor. Now it’s bright pink and perhaps just tastes like pomegranate, which I also think is horrible. This is Yellow Leaf’s charity cupcake for the next 2 months. $1 from the sale of each cupcake goes to the Fred Hutchison Cancer Resarch Center. I’m glad for that benefit from my purchase. I’ve only had 2 of Yellow Leaf’s charity cupcakes so far and disliked them both. Maybe they don’t really want to donate, so they are offering cupcakes that won’t have repeat sales? Raing: ♥
Chai: Beautiful cupcake with golden sprinkles. Very flavorful cake with usual chai tea spices of cinnamon and ginger. The icing, surprisingly, also had chai flavor. This one was definitely the best of the Yellow Leaf bunch today, but still only ♥♥.
So, Mr Shuck had to be downtown yesterday. I took that to mean that God wanted me to go to Yellow Leaf on the way to work. I mean, seriously, we were only a couple (10) blocks away. There was another sign from above when I saw the Hazelnut Cream cupcake. I was thinking, “I hope there’s some Nutella® in that”, as I asked for the cupcake. The chick behind the counter asked if I like Nutella® and informed me that there was indeed filling made from Nutella® inside. YAY!
So, off I went to work. I had packed my camera and my red background napkin just in case a photo studio for cupcakes was needed. Since I was early, I had plenty of time to savor my mid morning snack. My coworkers glanced over to my desk, coveting my cupcake, I’m sure. I did not share. I brought cupcakes for them earlier in the week. This one was all mine
I made a mistake by eating the hazelnut off the top first. This left hazelnut bits stuck in my teeth and may have tainted my impressions. The vanilla cake was delectable (as always). The frosting was lightly flavored, but my underdeveloped palate couldn’t distinguish the flavor. The chocolate glaze on top seemed like it had a smidge of Nutella® in it, but that could have come from the hazelnut crumb in my teeth. There was a good tablespoonful of Nutella® filling inside. My only complaint about this cupcake (and keep in mind that I will eat Nutella® straight out of the jar) was that the “filling” was just a glob of the chocolatey spread. A mouthful of that is like a mouthful of peanut butter. Delicious at the appropriate time, but not velvety enough for the interior of an “upscale” cupcake. I think it would have been better whipped with some cream to give more of a ganache feel.
So I tried the White Chocolate Wasabi cupcake at Yellow Leaf today. Beautiful cupcake. The light purple plum icing and light green wasabi cupcake were very soothing together….like a lavender plant in bloom. There was a tiny hint of wasabi in the cake, just enough to tell there was something “not sweet” in there. The icing was delicately flavored with sugar crystals sprinkled over it to add a bit of crunch.
Mr Shuck had the Root Beer float. This was also a very mild tasting cupcake. Only a hint of root beer in the cupcake. (Good for me as I don’t like root beer, but then it wasn’t my cupcake.) Icing was scooped on top and tasted like vanilla ice cream. The chocolate (?) straw added some whimsy.
Unfortunately for Yellow Leaf, I had another French Toast cupcake. It wasn’t as amazingly delicious as I remembered, so it was KNOCKED OFF the Top 5 list and replaced with Trophy’s Strawberry Lemonade. I don’t know what I was thinking….
Photos to come shortly.
click photo to enlarge
Mentioned today:
So, I got the pictures from un-reviewed Yellow Leaf visit.
Ginger Tea: Excellent. Fresh ginger zinginess. Usually Yellow Leaf’s icing isn’t that flavorful, but the ginger icing was. The flavor reminded me of Hagen Daz Five Ice Cream: Ginger. Creamy and ginger-y is very unexpected. Coincidentally, Mr Shuck’s shirt was the same color. This one makes it to the top 5!
Boston Cream: Vanilla cake is always good at Yellow Leaf, but the vanilla icing is pretty tasteless. This could use more chocolate than the thin layer on top. Also not enough of custard filling. It was okay, but not great.
Dulce de Leche: I haven’t decided how I feel about this one. The filling was very significant and tasted like the canned dulce de leche: a slight burnt taste, extremely sweet. The icing had a mild caramel flavor.
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So, I was at Yellow Leaf AGAIN today. Wednesday will probably be my usual day for cupcakes since Mr Shuck is downtown. The earlier visit was due to guests in town. That’s how I am justifying this anyway. That’s part of the whole addiction, right? I’m not denying that I have a problem….
Tiramisu: Yellow cake with some liquor flavor that neither Mr Shuck nor I could identify. Marsala wine is apparently traditional for tiramisu, but I don’t think I could recognize it anyway. There was a tiny bit of espresso flavored filling. The cupcake was topped with (I assume) a marscapone icing dusted with espresso/cocoa powder. It was a good one!
Vanilla Toffee: As always, Mr Shuck and I loved the vanilla cake. The scoop of icing is simple and rests on a nice crunchy layer on top of the cake, I assume from toffee chips sprinkled on before baking. There is a great contrast in textures between the firm cake, the crunchy and almost sticky toffee chips and the silky icing.
Strawberry Macaroon: Coconut flavored cake with lightly flavored strawberry Italian butter-cream sprinkled with coconut flakes. There was a bit of a strawberry cake layer, but I’m not sure if it was intentional or if the icing soaked in a little…
Chocolate Cookies and Cream: Devils food cake with cookie bits dipped in chocolate topped with a scoop of icing and half a chocolate filled Oreo®. Also a textural party going on between the crisp cookie bits and creamy icing. Yellow Leaf’s chocolate icing reminds me of chocolate ice cream.
As always, if you click on the picture, you can see a larger version.
We were in Yellow Leaf today with my aunt and uncle who were visiting. Flavors tasted: Ginger Tea, Boston Cream, and Dulce de Leche. More information on these flavors to come….I had to use my aunt’s camera so I have to wait for her to send me the photos.
Fortunately, my aunt was chatty with the owner and baker, so we got information on upcoming flavors. We also got to taste the frosting for the Breast Cancer Awareness cupcake for September and October: cherry pomegranate. I normally don’t like anything pomegranate, but this was good. Other flavors to come: a wasabi cupcake dipped in white chocolate with a plum frosting. Sounds interesting. I am also looking forward to sweet potato for Halloween.
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My hard drive issues came before cupcakes for a couple of days. I was very grateful for new Yellow Leaf cupcake flavors whilst I was restoring my computer to as close to normal as it can be.
Strawberry Lemonade: I like Trophy’s Strawberry Lemonade better, but Yellow Leaf’s is Very good. The cake is fairly dense with a good texture. The interior photo shows that well. 2 different layered cake flavors is nice. The icing isn’t as strongly flavored as Trophy’s, but Yellow Leaf’s icing has a nice silky feel. The lemon icing wasn’t as flavorful as the strawberry, which was very fruity.
White Chocolate Pretzel: This is probably my second favorite Yellow Leaf flavor and one of my favorite cupcakes so far. My palate is not as sophisticated as it could be, so I don’t know if it was white chocolate cake or vanilla. Either way, it was delicious. There was a layer of white chocolate gluing some pretzel bits directly on top of the cake, then pretzels mixed with white chocolate icing on the top. I love the mix of sweet and salty and the contrast of crunchy pretzel with silky smooth icing.
Black Forest: Was just okay. Chocolate cake with cherry glaze topped with icing. I think of Black Forest as very cherry/chocolate. This one seemed like chocolate cake with vanilla icing. Not much cherry flavor.
Chocolate Orange: I didn’t like this one, but James did. Chocolate cake layered with orange cake topped chocolate glaze then orange icing. The orange tasted a bit artificial.
Some people might choose to drink when presented with stress. I fortunately have a husband who brought me home cupcakes. 6 lovely little cakes from The Yellow Leaf Cupcake Company. Today’s selection:
White Chocolate Pretzel
Chocolate Orange
Black Forest
Carrot (for him)
Strawberry-Lemonade
Chocolate Toffee (a repeat, but a good one!)
Reviews and photos to follow.
I ate the remaining cupcake today, The American. I didn’t realize it had Red Velvet cake at the bottom. UGH!
So the American Cupcake was cute. Red Velvet on the bottom, then almond cake dyed blue, then white cake, then white icing. So much dye! So much cake that tasted like food coloring. Oh, well! It was the Yellow Leaf cupcake for charity, so someone got $1 from my purchase.