Sweet Passions Let Down...

Imagine my delight when, as I was dropping off the SATs at the UPS office, I spotted a cupcakery literally right next door!  I couldn't believe my luck!  I grabbed my purse and headed in!


Sweet Passions Bakery is relatively new to the cupcake world.  They do a lot of cakes for many different occasions.  They even had a kiosk in the mall for a while (didn't remember this until after...)


I was pretty underwhelmed by the ambiance.  Obviously, if it's right next door to the UPS, it isn't going to be in a quaint little bakery - or at least the chances of that are significantly decreased...It basically was like a little strip mall shop - didn't have a whole lot of character.  The cupcakes were displayed, en masse, behind a glass screen, and they were just lined up like little soldiers.  Their menu was cute, but the neon sign was a bit of a turn off to me.  Overall, I would give the ambiance of this place a:



Oh well - we still have the taste portion of the interview...


Their flavor options were amazing - very creative and tempting!  I ended up getting four...They were that tempting!  I chose the following flavors:
Red Velvet
Pineapple Cream
Strawberry Banana
and....my personal favorite sounding.....Khalua Cream with Marble Cake


I had to wait until Mike got home - I didn't want to be a cupcake-holic - eating cupcakes by myself, with my dog.  That would be sad.... (I was tempted, though)  It wasn't until I got home that I noticed how ENORMOUS these cupcakes were - I mean, seriously.  Jumbo size.  

Yummmmm

This is also giving us a chance to try out our new lens...

We chose to start with:


Red Velvet


Man, was this ever a bright cupcake!  I'm a little wary of the "too red" Red Velvet cupcake, but I stated in the beginning that this would be my kind of "staple" choice - one that I would get everywhere.  So, I did.  


Decoration: It was topped very simply - cream cheese frosting with red velvet cake crumbles.  Pretty traditional piping, and overall decoration for that matter.  I know that Red Velvet is the traditional/uber popular cupcake, but I really want someone to do something cooler than just top it with cream cheese and call it a day.  Since I was bored, the decoration for me got a:

Photo by M. Fujii

Taste: Then, we dove into taste this bad boy.  YIKES!  Didn't even finish it.  The frosting, first of all, was a bit too tangy for my taste.  I thought it was overly sweet, and my husband thought it was a bad combination of butter cream and cream cheese.  It was light and fluffy - but that's about all it had going for it.  The cake itself didn't taste like a red velvet, either.  It had a strong (and weird) after taste.  There wasn't a very strong chocolate flavor (which might explain why it was such a bright red color).  And boy was it dry.  Very dry.   (Maybe this is why it is easy for them to top with crumbles of cake - it kind of naturally does this...)  Thank goodness for that frosting - that was the only moisture coming to it!  You would need a TALL glass of milk to get through this.  Overall taste for this:



Khalua


Now this was one I was really looking forward to.  It reminded me of the Samoa goodness from Sift, in Napa (their only good cupcake, IMO - but isn't this all my opinion? It's my blog!)

Decoration: Like the Samoa cupcake, this one was a bit sloppy, but in very inviting way - the chocolate drizzle over the frosting looked like a delicious cookie calling my name.  I thought it could have used some sort of center piece - a topper, or decoration of some kind, but other than that, it made me want to go nam nam nam!

Taste:   So far, this place should rename themselves "Sweet DRY Passions" - and most passions aren't dry, so....maybe you should look into something else?  Seriously - cotton mouth inducing cake. The flavor was really good - the frosting had just a hint of Khalua, which was yummy, but it was soooo dry.  More butter?  Sour cream?  Milk?  Cream?  Hell - mist?  Something was needed for this poor, thirsty cupcake. And for this poor thirsty sampler - luckily I just bought a gallon of milk yesterday.  Overall, I would    
                                                                                    give it a:



At the bitter (and dry) end of round 1, this is what was left...

Overall - I don't really like it when places use the same piping/frosting technique on every single cupcake.  They have such different personalities - honor that by mixing up how you dress them.


Tomorrow - the pineapple and strawberry banana....