Battle Cupcake

Mom's Red Velvet, Fresh's Vanilla with strawberry icing and Fresh's red velvet.

Mimi stopped by the shop to tell me about the new cupcake place that opened in Towson Town Center and in a booth ten meters outside of Spro for HonFest. Huh???

She introduced me to Michael, the owner, a good-natured fellow who's selling a selection of square-shaped cupcakes. They looked delicious, so I had to sample a couple.

Spying their red velvet cupcake I knew I had to do a head-to-head comparison and bought one plus a vanilla cupcake with strawberry icing.

Back inside Spro, the testing started in the lab - even with all the frenzy of HonFest scurrying around us. The testing/tasting would be simple: take a few bites and compare.

First up was the vanilla cupcake with strawberry icing. The cake was moist and sweet, not heavy on the vanilla but with a light sweetness. The icing though was the the highlight. Fresh, crisp, a bit of acid - the strawberries had to be fresh because the flavor just exploded in the mouth. Lovely.

Pitting the Red Velvets against each other proved really interesting. Most red velvets tend to be dry. The Fresh version was moist and had a nice mouthfeel and still had the same sweetness that I noted in the vanilla. However, it lacked a distinct cocoa flavor - which is the hallmark of red velvet cake. Lightly sweet and moist, it just did not have that essential cocoa character.