The Cupcake Challenge, Volume 1

Jen and Juney dropped by Magnolia Bakery before our dinner at The Spotted Pig (summary: good burger, interesting fries--the shoestring variety a.k.a. fried air).

Jen is on a mission to try all the best, and worst, cupcakes this city has to offer. What better place to begin than New York's most famous cupcake?

We've discussed the judging process before but this was our first time putting the criteria to practice. We agreed that opinions will be based upon (1) taste, (2) presentation/creativity, (3) texture/moistness, and (4) frosting. This last criterion is key. Bakeries top their cupcakes with heaps of frosting, which means we have to judge the frosting on the previous criteria (4a-d) in addition to asking ourselves (4e) does the frosting compliment the cake? We also discussed how to compare cupcakes fairly. We reasoned that we must have a Control--the classic vanilla plus buttercream frosting combo. In addition, each bakery is allowed a minimum of one Wild Card. This is the bakery's chance to shine!

Are YOU ready for THE CUPCAKE CHALLENGE?


Meet the challenger, the home-made coconut cupcake.
(recipe courtesy of Ina Garten)


The coconut cupcake contender meets its heavyweight contenders:
chocolate-buttercream, red velvet, and vanilla-buttercream.


Note: I did not document a lot of the tasting since we were extremely focused on method and analysis.

Two down. Two to go.


Divvying up the red velvet.


What exactly constitutes a red velvet cupcake? We asked ourselves the same question. Thanks to Wikipedia, we discovered it's a rich chocolate cake usually made with cocoa powder and red food dye.


PROCEDURE

RESULTS

OBSERVATIONS
vanilla-buttercream
The Magnolia standard cupcake was better than I remembered. When compared to the others, it was really sweet but overall, not bad.
chocolate-buttercream
Bad. The dense chocolate cake paired with the frosting was a combo none of us liked.
red velvet
Juney and I liked this one because it wasn't that sweet and the frosting was a light whipped cream. Jen on the other hand came to the conclusion she does not like red velvet.
coconut
This cupcake was surprisingly dense compared to the Magnolia iron chefs but it was still tasty and not too sweet.

CONCLUSION
Ina's coconut cupcake recipe is a winner. I will definitely bake these again.

Magnolia cupcakes are decent but probably overrated at a steep price of $3.80 + tax in addition to your time spent in line.