Oakmont Bakery, Oakmont PA

This past weekend some friends and I headed up to Oakmont Bakery to check out their line of "gourmet cupcakes".  I've been curious about Oakmont's cupcakes ever since I first laid eyes on their cupcake webpage.  To quote:

Oakmont Bakery has a fantastic line of gourmet cupcakes.  And frankly, these cupcakes don’t care if you like them or not.  They’re great, and they know it...visit us to see for yourself that these cupcakes are definitely NOT just all talk.  You got a problem with that?

That's some attitude, huh?  One possibility is that these cupcakes are freaking amazing, and though the arrogance is annoying, it is rightfully earned.  Another explanation is that the defensive in-your-face prose is a thinly veiled shield for a sub-optimal product.  Unfortunately, the latter seems to be the case.
My friend Bryan and I split five cupcakes.  Brief overviews are as follows; you can read the full reviews by clicking the names of the cupcakes.

The Parrot Head is comprised of yellow cake with key lime filling topped with white cream and "lime lookin" ganache.  The moist, buttery cake was good, but the robustness of the vanilla flavor combined with the hint of salty preservatives screamed "box mix!".  The key lime "filling" (the squirt was only about 1/8" wide and 1" deep) had the texture of donut filling with a limey taste that wasn't nearly tart enough to be authentic key lime.  The "lime lookin" ganache was actually a hard white chocolate shell, though its flavor was primarily salty with an aftertaste of white chocolate.  When combined with the literally tasteless white fluff used as frosting, it made for a cupcake whose sweetest component was the buttery cake.  Overall the cupcake tasted like "salty marshmallow fluff" -- the splash of lime was only present in the one bite containing the sparse filling.  Blech.

The Sassy Razzy is made up of white almond cake with real raspberry filling topped with raspberry striped buttercream.  The cake was delicate and soft with a sweet, refreshing flavor that reminded me of angel food cake.  Yum!  The frosting was the same tasteless fluff as on the Parrot Head, but with raspberries mixed in.  It wasn't sweet at all, and instead tasted more like buttery, tart raspberries.  The real raspberry filling was nice and tart, but again not very sweet.  As with the Parrot Head, the sweetest part of this cupcake was the cake.  Although each of the components of this cupcake tasted ok on their own, when combined they produced a flavor of "sour raspberries".  Odd, and not so tasty.

This patriotic American Dream is made up of white almond cake with blueberries mixed in, cherry filling, and white buttercream frosting.  The cake was super moist and sweet with a nice blueberry flavor that reminded me of a blueberry muffin, without all the butteriness of a muffin.  That tart cherry flavor of the filling surprised me as I'm used to cherry fillings being sweet.  As with the key lime filling, the texture and consistency was akin to a jelly donut filling.  The fluffy frosting on this cupcake seemed to be different from the others.  In addition to being tasteless, it was bitter and salty and had this subtle, chalky undercurrent to it.  The overall flavor of this smooth cupcake was fruity and tart, with a chalky aftertaste from the frosting.  This cake could have been good "naked", without the gross chalky frosting.

The Godfather is comprised of yellow cake filled with tiramisu cream dunked in espresso and topped with more tiramisu cream.  The buttery yellow cake tasted just like Parrot Head's, with that same "box mix" flavor to it.  The tiramisu cream filling/frosting wasn't half bad; it was nice and sweet with a hint of coffee flavor from the espresso-soaked cake-top.  The texture was much lighter and fluffier than real tiramisu cream.  Overall this was a decent cupcake that reasonably approximated the taste of Tiramisu, though I wish it had more heft to it (like real espresso-soaked Tiramisu).

The Opposites Attract is a more classic flavor combination with yellow cake filled with milk chocolate buttercream topped with fudge icing.  The cake was the same yellow box mix cake found in the Parrot Head and Godfather.  Good, but fake.  The milk chocolate buttercream filling was the same tasteless fluff used as "frosting" on the other cupcakes, only with cocoa powder mixed in.  Blech!  The chocolate fudge frosting was super thick and super gooey.  I loved the texture, though the sweet chocolate flavor reminded me exactly of Giant Eagle's chocolate frosting, only a bit sweeter.  Overall this cupcake tasted just like Giant Eagle's yellow cake with fudge frosting, but with sweeter frosting.  Not terrible, but I'm not a fan of the chalky sprinkles and tasteless fluff filling.

In general, it seems to me that the Oakmont Bakery is neglecting (totally ignoring?) the frosting component of the cupcakes.  Frosting is just as important as cake -- you can't just throw a tasteless, salty frosting on top of a nice cake and expect that to be ok!  They also don't seem to be putting much consideration into composition and flavor balance.  In my opinion, charging $2.00 for a box mix cupcake topped with tasteless fluff frosting is simply ridiculous, even if they are decorated quite nicely.  I would recommend that Oakmont residents spend the extra $0.50 + gas money to make the short trek into Pittsburgh for real gourmet cupcakes from CoCo's and Dozen.

Brian mentioned that Oakmont had both full-sized and individual-sized Key Lime Pies for sale.  I grew up in Key West and miss the taste of real Key Lime Pie quite terribly.  I was all set to grab an individual pie on my way out the door until I saw one in the display case:

Real Key Lime Pie looks like this; notice that it's actually yellowish, not green, and that it's a creamy opaque color rather than a translucent greyish color.  Shudder.