Cupcake Babies!

by Erin

While I was in LA, I came to realize that cupcakes are the new, hip thing there. They're all the rage - who knew?! Apparently there have been a handful of cupcake shops popping up all over the place, and cousins Ann and Steven took me to a nearby one in Santa Monica that opened just one month ago: Vanilla Bake Shop.

Vanilla Bake Shop was absolutely the cutest, most whimsical little bakery I've ever stepped foot in! It's well-lit and decorated with a lot of whites and pastels, and they have jars of colored sugars everywhere.

They have a wide assortment of treats, with of course cupcakes being the stars. More specifically, Vanilla Bake Shop focuses on mini-cupcakes, which it calls "cupcake babies" - um, ADORABLE!

One other adorable thing about Vanilla Bake Shop was that they serve milk to drink with your cupcakes. They clearly know the cupcake biz.

They have many different flavors of cupcakes: some are standard for every day, and the rest are on a daily rotation (i.e., certain flavors on Monday, different flavors for Tuesday, etc.). We decided to get a dozen mini-cupcakes and share them so we could try as many flavors as possible!

We got:

• Vanilla Bean, Creamy Vanilla Bean Cake, Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Bean Frosting
  
• Mom's Birthday Cake, All American Yellow Cake, Milk Chocolate Frosting
  
• Southern Red Velvet, Southern Red Velvet Cake, Sweet Cream Cheese Frosting
  
• Bittersweet Dark Chocolate, Dark Chocolate Cake, Bittersweet Chocolate Frosting, Chocolate Sprinkles
  
• Meyer Lemon Raspberry, Yellow Butter Cake, Lemon Curd Center, Vanilla Bean Frosting & Raspberries
  
• Toasted Dark Chocolate Coconut, Dark Chocolate Cake, Toasted Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting
  
• Key Lime, Yellow Butter Cake, Key Lime Filling, Cream Cheese Frosting, Graham Cracker Crust Crumbles
  

Meyer Lemon Raspberry

Vanilla Bean

Key Lime

Southern Red Velvet

Toasted Dark Chocolate Coconut

Steven enjoying Mom's Birthday Cake

As expected, they were WONDERFUL! My favorites were the Vanilla Bean and the Key Lime cupcakes - so flavorful and delicious, and such creative flavors.

It was a wonderful, LA-tastic excursion and I will keep my eye out for the cupcake trend to hit Baltimore...but I won't hold my breath.

Happy eating,

EP