Cross-Country Cupcake Crawl Wrap-up

It's been two weeks since we've returned from our cross-country cupcake extravaganza and we've recovered enough to write up a little roundup.  (To read about the crawl from the beginning, click here.)  The trip was not at all what we were expecting; there was excitement and adventure, laughter and crying, cops and cacti, and of course, tons of cupcakes.  Here are the rough statistics:

Miles Traveled:	3707.8
States Entered:	15
Stores Visited:	32
Cupcakes Eaten:	56
Cars Totaled:	1

Now that we've had time to reflect on the experience, here are our personal favorites from the trip:

Best Overall Cupcakes: Cupcake Station
Birmingham, MI
There was no contest on this one.  We were totally blown away by the rapid succession of perfect cupcakes we ate in the store.  As if serving mind-blowing cupcakes wasn't enough, Cupcake Station hosts fun events (like their cupcake eating contest) and does great community outreach work.  Their 50s-themed store is spacious and bright and they sell the cutest t-shirts ever.  The super-friendly staff is just icing on the cupcake.


Best Individual Cupcake: Cupcake Station's Strawberry Delight
This cupcake was like a little piece of heaven.  I despise strawberry flavored food, and even I agreed that this was hands down the best cupcake of the trip.  The strawberry cake was cool and moist with the refreshing taste of real strawberries.  The strawberry frosting was like thick silk; cool, smooth, and sweet with the same delicious taste of fresh strawberries.  The textures of the frosting and cake blended exceptionally well and the frosting to cake ratio was perfect.  Unlike many strawberry cupcakes which taste syrupy sweet and artificial, this cupcake was 100% real.  Amazing.

Cutest Store: Cake Nouveau
Ann Arbor, MI
I have long admired  Cake Nouveau's gorgeous, whimsical cakes, and their colorful store was just as charming as their confections.  Opening the door was like taking a step into Alice's Tea Party; the top halves of the walls are a deep purple while the bottom halves are painted in rolling green and white stripes.  Cupcake-themed art decorates the walls while crazy, kooky cakes perch in the window.  A luxurious purple velvet sofa gives patrons a place to sit and rest while they browse Cake Nouveau's impressive portfolios.  Several small tables provide additional seating room, and the whimsical decor extends into the kitchen in the form of green checkerboard tiles.  Too cute!  As a bonus, their cupcakes are positively scrumptious.


We were also surprised by the diversity we saw among the cupcakeries as we traveled across the country.  We noticed some regional differences in all sorts of things from where cupcakeries are located to how they store their cupcakes.  Here are some observations from our notebooks:

Observation 1
In general, we found that cupcakes located in small-town bakeries were tastier than their more famous large-city counterparts.  I can think of two explanations for this phenomenon.  One possibility is that at one point in time big-city cupcakes were really good, but as the cupcakeries' fame increased so did their business.  As the cupcakeries increased their volume to meet the expanding demand, the quality of the cupcakes suffered.  Another possibility is that cupcakes from the famous big-city bakeries were never that great, but their fame is a byproduct of novelty and hype and since most of their patrons are tourists they don't need to worry about having a high-quality product that attracts repeat customers.  What do you all think?

Observation 2
Including this cupcake crawl we've visited over forty stores, and yet we would still place Dozen and CoCo's in the top five of "Best Overall Cupcakes".  Dozen's exotic frostings, especially their citrus-based ones, could easily blow most of the frostings we sampled on this trip out of the water.  CoCo's moist, flavorful cakes are far superior to many of the specimens we sampled over the last week.  Are we just incredibly lucky to live within a mile of two of the best cupcakeries in the country, or have our palettes just become accustomed to CoCo's and Dozen's cupcakes?

Observation 3
Many of the small-town cupcakeries we visited were located in older strip malls.  I don't know why this surprised us as much as it did, though there was a bit of a disconnect in finding such a new trend in older, fading structures.  The upside to being located in a strip mall is that there's plenty of open parking.

Observation 4
What's with the refrigerated display cases?  All but a handful of the bakeries we visited on this trip kept their cupcakes in refrigerated cases.  None of the places I've visited in New York do that, neither of the Pittsburgh cupcakeries use refrigerated cases, and the stores we visited in London didn't use them either.  I know Cake Love uses them because the Maryland DoH requires them to, so I wonder if that's the case in these other cities as well.  Or maybe not all cupcakeries serve fresh-daily cupcakes and use the refrigerated cases to make their cupcakes last longer.

Observation 5
The definition of "Cafe" seems to vary by state.  In Phoenix, "Cafe" did not necessarily imply seating space.  In Albuquerque we visited a "Cafe" that was more like a fancy sit-down restaurant.  In Pittsburgh "Cafes" are typically places with counter service and plenty of seating where people go to relax and hang out, read a book, or make use of free wireless.

Observation 6
About a handful of the stores we've visited do not permit photography indoors.  We were very confused about why stores would have this policy until an employee of Swirlz Cupcakes asked if we were going to copy them when we asked if we could take pictures.  Aha!  Frankly, I still don't think this makes very much sense.  First of all, pictures = publicity, and you can never have too much of that.  Second of all, these aren't graphic design firms, these are bakeries.  Their product is cupcakes, which anyone can walk in off the street and buy, and take elsewhere to examine and reverse engineer.  Duh.  To quote a Yelp reader, "it takes more than a pretty storefront to turn a profit."

So What's Next?
Well, we still have to drive to Toronto sometime and visit the three cupcakeries there.  We're also toying with the idea of doing a New York Cupcake Crawl (probably sometime over winter break) and an East Coast Cupcake Crawl.  We need a couple of months of recuperation first, though.

Despite all of the drama and stomachaches, we had a lot of fun and I'm glad we embarked on this madness.  For those of you planning your own cupcake crawls let me leave you with some suggestions:

1.  Limit yourselves to two stores a day, and two cupcakes at each store.
2.  Call ahead!  Make sure that they will have cupcakes on the day you're visiting, and check to see if their store hours have changed.
3.  A tip from Melisser -- bring saltines or other salty/savory snacks to munch on when you're feeling a bit sugar sick.
4.  Some bakeries are walk-up and don't have any seating or plasticware.  It's a good idea to bring some paper plates and plasticware just in case.
5.  Wear your seatbelt.