Cupcake Crawl: Northern VA

In a supremely bizarre coincidence, I ran into Warren Brown at CoCo's a couple of weeks ago.  As we were chatting I mentioned that my parents lived in Northern Virginia and he reminded me that the Cake Love store in Shirlington had just opened.  While visiting my parents for Thanksgiving I thought I'd pop on over to the new Cake Love and some other local bakeries and check out the cupcakes.  Red Velvet, who I went to high school and college with, was also in town visiting his family and I was able to convince him to accompany me on my adventures.

Cake Love
Shirlington, VA
The new Cake Love in Shirlington is located in a very modern, very trendy, brand new shopping complex called The Village.  Cake Love is right next door to a large public library, and I can imagine that during the summer months the tables and chairs on the patio must be packed with people enjoying baked treats and reading.

The interior to this Cake Love was nearly identical to the one I visited in Silver Spring, Maryland, only without all the hilariously wacky stick-figure signage on the walls (though I'm sure that's forthcoming).  A long, tall table on the right side of the store provided a space for patrons to stand and eat.  A sign on the table mentioned that the standing bar would be replaced by some tables and chairs soon, so that guests could sit and relax.


Red and I each chose a cupcake which we took to the standing bar to eat.  I'm a sucker for tart frostings and lime is my all-time favorite, so the vanilla cupcake with lime frosting was a no-brainer for me.  The cupcake had a scrumptious smell of tart lime.  Due to the fact that the Maryland (and I guess Virginia?) Departments of Health require them to refrigerate their baked goods, Cake Love recommends waiting at least 15 minutes before consuming their products.  The last time I listened to this advice I ended up with a runny mess on my hands, so I was a bit apprehensive about waiting again.  Nobody on Yelp had complained about the frosting melting, so I chalked up my prior experience to a fluke and decided to wait.

Happily, this time the frosting didn't melt.  Yay!  The vanilla cake was still a bit cold, with a moist and buttery rich sweet vanilla flavor.  The cake granules were a slightly rougher than I'm used to, but it wasn't a big deal.  The frosting was light and buttery and super creamy, with a delicious tart (yet sweet) lime flavor.  Very cool and refreshing!   Typically when I eat cupcakes I complain that they have too much frosting, but strangely Cake Love's cupcakes have too little frosting for my taste.  The frosting is only about 1/8" thick, and though its flavor is well balanced against the cake, texture-wise I find myself wanting more frosting in the mix.  The overall flavor of the cupcake was sweet, tart, and limey, with a hint of the vanilla peeking through.  Yum!

Red chose the chocolate cake with strawberry frosting, and I took the liberty of stealing a couple of bites.  I didn't have enough to give it a proper review, but I wanted to mention that the strawberry frosting was really freaking good.  The pale pink frosting was cool and creamy with a natural strawberry flavor.  The chunks of real strawberries swirled in enhanced both the aesthetics and taste of the frosting.  It was super refreshing and reminded me a lot of the strawberry frosting I had at Cupcake Station.  The chocolate cake, on the other hand, was just average.  It had a somewhat bitter cocoa flavor, and the granules were kind of rough.  Ultimately, it was just a vehicle for the amazingly delicious frosting.

Still craving cupcakes after finishing my Vanilla Lime, I went back to the counter and bought a Vanilla Orange.  The Vanilla Orange cupcake was nearly identical to the Vanilla Lime cupcake, but with orange frosting instead of lime frosting.  The super crumbly vanilla cake was still a bit cold after the 10 minutes I waited before eating it, with a buttery, sweet vanilla flavor.  The creamy frosting was initially cool and refreshing, with a burst of sweet, citrusy orange flavor that hits you a fraction of a second later.  The frosting wasn't tart like the Vanilla Lime's, just citrusy, but was still quite delicious.  As with the Vanilla Lime cupcake, I was left wanting a bit more frosting, just for texture's sake.  The overall orangey vanilla flavor of the cupcake was rather good.

My only complaint is that the price point is a little high on these cupcakes -- for $3 I better be getting the best gastronomical experience EVAR, and while these were awesome, they weren't $3 worth of awesome.

After wandering around the Harris Teeter (I'd never been to one before) and availing ourselves of all their free samples, we headed over to the Best Buns Bread Company just down the street.

Best Buns Bread Company
Shirlington, VA
Best Buns Bread Company is a large, warm, inviting bakery stuffed full of all kinds of baked goodies.  Two display cases are bursting with tasty delights, while a long counter and barstools against the front window provide seating for hungry guests.  One of the display cases had several baskets of monstrously large cupcakes.  The only flavor that tickled my fancy was the Chocolate Toffee, but I was feeling a bit cupcaked-out at the moment so I took it to go.  Red wasn't interested in another cupcake, so he bought a warm croissant and a cup of coffee.  I took the cupcake home and shared with the rest of my family later that night.


This huge chocolate cupcake with toffee frosting had a rich smell of butter and caramel that reminded me of butterscotch.  The frosting was pale yellow in color with dark, golden flecks that I assume are pieces of toffee swirled in.  The cake was moist and dense with a dark chocolate flavor just rich enough to be slightly bitter.  Super good!  The light and fluffy frosting was very buttery, to the point where it tasted like eating straight whipped honey butter.  It tasted exactly like a Werther's Original butterscotch candy, only more buttery.  The frosting added a rich buttery, caramel taste to the rich chocolate flavor of the cake.  Overall it was still a bit too buttery for my taste, but made for a very rich, decadent cupcake.

This cupcake was just as good as the three I had at Cake Love, but it's twice as big for less money.  Also, this cupcake and the ones from Cake Love seemed to have different compositions.  This one was like traditional bakery cupcakes; the taste was a bit more moist and "fatty", perhaps from the use of shortening in the cake?  The cupcakes from Cake Love, on the other hand, were more like the ones you find in gourmet cupcakeries, where the taste is drier and lighter.

At any rate, this Chocolate Toffee cupcake was quite delicious and was a great bargain for the $2.50 price tag.

Le Cupcake
Sold In: Stacy's Coffee Parlour
Falls Church, VA
Cupcakes from Le Cupcake can actually be found in two locations in the country: their retail location in Los Angeles, and on Saturdays and Sundays in Stacy's Coffee Parlour in Falls Church, Virginia.  Owner Robyn lives in Northern Virginia and bakes the cupcakes sold at Stacy's herself, while her brother Doug operates the retail location in California.  Baron and I took the opportunity to visit Stacy's on a Saturday morning a couple of months ago when we were in town visiting my family.



Stacy's is your typical indy coffee shop, full of eclectic thrift store furniture and bulletin boards containing all sorts of posters and fliers.  Baron and I found a small plate of cupcakes in the display case in a handful of pastel colors.  I asked what the flavors were and the nice girl told me that they were all the same flavor, and she wasn't sure what it was.  We chose the pink one (though it wasn't exactly a choice considering Baron's odd fascination with pink cupcakes).  We took our cupcake to a little victorian table near the window where we split it.

With vanilla cake and pink frosting, we just assumed this cupcake was Vanilla Vanilla.  The cake was moist and sweet with a robust vanilla flavor. It was quite possibly the best vanilla cupcake cake I've ever had. The sugary frosting was light and fluffy, and extremely sweet. It didn't have an obvious flavor, though it left a cool, minty aftertaste in my mouth, leading me to believe it was peppermint flavored. There was way too much frosting for the cake; about twice as much as necessary, and to some extent its fluffiness and oversweet flavor reminded me of grocery store frosting. Even when I removed the excess, the flavor of the frosting dominated the cupcake, but the vanilla and mint flavors complemented each other nicely, and it's a combo I never would have thought of. The sprinkles had that chalky flavor I hate, and added some crunch to the cupcake. However, I'm such a fan of the cake's texture that I would just as soon ditch the sprinkles. The cake really is the highlight of this cupcake.

Bakeshop DC
Sold In: Murky Coffee
Arlington, VA
A word of warning: do not attempt to find Murky Coffee unless you're intimately familiar with the Arlington area. A Fairfax native, it took me nearly an hour to navigate the five-street intersections, two way streets that randomly turn into one-way streets for a couple blocks, streets that are labeled with numbers instead of names, streets that change name, and the roads that intersect the highway twice. After I finally found the correct street, I passed by Murky Coffee twice without realizing that was the place -- the only thing that identifies the virtually unmarked building is the name "Murky Coffee" in black paint on the dark tinted windows. The parking lot behind Murky Coffee teases you as you drive by, as there's no easily discernible way to reach it. (It turns out you have to go all the way to the end of the block, turn right, and double back to the access road behind the building.)

Another indy coffee shop, Murky Coffee was full of twenty-something hippies reading and chatting and college students doing homework on their laptops.  The place was so full, in fact, that despite two large floors of seating, we had to share a couch with a knitting group so that we could sit and eat.  Murky was carrying two flavors of cupcakes from Bakeshop DC that day, Red Velvet and Chocolate Vanilla, and we got one of each.  The cupcakes were smaller than normal, about 20% smaller than your average sized cupcake.


The red velvet cake was very moist but  also super crumbly, and tasted kind of like salty chocolate. I've never had a Red Velvet cupcake that wasn't frosted with Cream Cheese frosting, so I was a bit surprised when I took a bite of this icing. It turned out to be regular old icing -- light, sugary, and very very sweet with a subtle vanilla flavor. Together, the cake and frosting had this sweet & salty thing going on which is kind of unusual for a cupcake. The cupcake also left a greasy taste in my mouth which was both gross and reminiscent of grocery store cupcakes.  Overall, the salty/grease taste dominated the sweetness of the frosting.  Ultimately this cupcake was a disappointment -- it tasted worse than grocery store cupcakes, but cost more than real "gourmet" cupcakes.

The crumbly chocolate cake in this Chocolate Vanilla cupcake was super moist with a rich yet somehow subtle chocolate flavor. Though the cake was primarily sweet, the chocolate left a bitter aftertaste on my tongue. The frosting was the same one found on the Red Velvet -- light and sugary with a generic sweet flavor that had a greasy taste. Combined with the sweet chocolate cake, it screams "grocery store!" The moistness of the cake and the greasiness of the frosting led me to believe they're both made from mixes -- definitely not worth the whopping $2.75.  The best thing about this cupcake was the shiny foil wrapper.

Ultimately, the expensive sub-standard grocery-store quality cupcakes are definitely not worth the trip, though the hand-mixed drinks are amazing. My marbled hot chocolate both looked and tasted like someone had swirled melted dark chocolate into warmed heavy whipping cream. Yum!

Whew!  That's all of the places in the Northern VA area that offer cupcakes at retail locations.  I still haven't had a chance to visit the cupcakeries in DC, but hopefully I'll get a chance during my next visit to my family.