Washington, DC 20007
(202) 333-2500
www.bakedandwired.com
Visited: June 26, 2010
Despite the nickname of "Cupcakes Antonio" bestowed upon me by my most favorite Yelpers, I had yet to:
1) Visit a cupcake place in DC
2) Write a review about a cupcake place in DC
Well my friends, the time has come for me to lose my cupcake virginity by reviewing my first "mini cake" place. What better place to be the source of my first cupcake review Baked & Wired (BW)? Here's how it went down...
This morning (Saturday) I packed up the monkeys while the boss lady slept, filled up the minivan with petrol and made a mad dash to DC. I was excited at the idea of arriving right at 8am when they opened to beat any sort of rush and to avoid the infamous Georgetown traffic.
We arrived right at 8am and found a parking spot right in front of the store. Schweeet-ah! I unloaded the monkeys, grabbed them by the hands and headed into BW.
The inside had that very clean appearance with the beverage section split from the pastry section by a brick wall. The pastry area had a variety of sweet offerings under glass domes while a representative of each cupcake offering was proudly displayed on a plate next to their name. My mouth was watering and I was glad that I hadn't had anything to eat just yet.
I decided to walk on the edge of danger by pushing my body to the brink of becoming a diabetic; I ordered 7 cupcakes. Here's a list what I ordered (descriptions from their website):
1) Chocolate Cupcake of Doom - Chocolate cake with a dark chocolate satin frosting
2) Vanilla Latte - Vanilla cake with an espresso buttercream
3) Strawberry - Vanilla cake with fresh strawberries folded in the batter finished with a swirl of pink buttercream.
4) Red Velvet - A little chocolate, a little vanilla, and lots of deep red color, topped with a heap of cream cheese frosting
5) Mocha - Chocolate cake with a mocha buttercream
6) Razmanian Devil - Lemon cake with a raspberry jam center topped with lemon buttercream
7) Smurfette - Fresh blueberries are baked into vanilla cake, topped with lemon buttercream
The 7th cupcake was for the boys who were already tugging at my leg and shorts asking me, "Daddy cupcake? Daddy cupcake?". The gentleman that took our order was very kind and placed 6 of the 7 cupcakes in a box and just as I had requested, put the 7th on a dish to eat there.
I walked the boys, my box of cupcakes and the dish holding the Smurfette cupcake to a lounge type leather seat/couch area. As soon as we sat down, the boys eagerly reached for the cupcake trying their best to wrestle the sweet goodness from my hands. I sat them down, told them to listen and proceeded to rip off pieces of the Smurfette cupcake.
"Ummm...ummm!" was the response I heard from both boys as small crumbs escapes their mouths and fell onto the leather couch. They clearly enjoyed the early morning treat and I felt like the father of the year feeding by sons such sweet treats so early in the morning. Please don't call child services on me!
I took a bit of the Smurfette cupcake and was impressed by the moist texture of the vanilla cake and the subtle sweet 'n tartness of the lemon frosting. Each bite had a blueberry and these bits of blueness each held its own tart goodness to further offset the sweetness of the cake. To sum it up, it was good. :-)
Once the boys finished up their cupcake, we hopped back into the minivan and headed home. I knew I couldn't properly try out the rest of the cupcakes with the boys around so I waited until they went down for a nap.
As the boys napped, and with a fresh homemade microwave latte in hand I began my work. I took a 1/4 from each of the six cupcakes to best sample them individually. Here are my opinions about each cupcake and a ranking based on my unscientifically and fatboy funded study:
6) Red Velvet - Surprisingly, it was a bit dry which made it taste not too fresh or appealing.
5) Razmanian Devil - I really hate raspberry, but tried this cupcake anyway. The cake was moist and was filled with a raspberry jam center. The lemon frosting was tasty.
4) Mocha - Tasty chocolate cake and the mocha butter cream was great!
3) Vanilla Latte - The espresso butter cream makes the vanilla cupcake shine!
2) Chocolate Cupcake of Doom - OMG, a dream come true for chocolate lovers. The frosting was so smooth, soft and rich that I want to come back (reincarnated) as this cupcake.
1) Strawberry - Wow, I never thought a fruity cupcake would be my favorite. This cupcake had it all: great flavor, not too sweet and an amazingly moist cake that had me saying, "Yabba dabba doo this is goooood!!"
All of the cupcakes had a great balance between the cake and their respective frosting. BW does a great job of not making the cake too sweet and really delivering most of the sweetness via the frosting.
I was very impressed and despite my body now asking me to eat a 98 oz steak to counter all of the ingested sugar...I'll definitely come back to try more cupcakes...just one per visit.
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