Perfect Batter... I Mean, Matter

Is there such thing as perfect matter? I know there's perfect gas and nearly perfect liquid, but what about an ideal solid?

It's nothing to do with thermal this or intermolecular that, but the ability to be really useful and delicious in virtually any state of being, condition, location, time, thought or will.

Kind of like a cupcake.

The thought hit me this afternoon when I spied the frozen cupcakes I stored from my last Main Street visit (for Run Cupcake Run). As I bit off a chunk of frosting from a pumpkin spice treat, I tried to think of a state in which cupcakes just aren't good.

Right out of the oven: warm and gooey good.

Room temperature: just about perfect good.

Out a few days too long: hard enough to use as a weapon good.

And frozen: awesomely delicious good.

You can thaw the things half way or only cook them partially through, and somehow the mixture of sugar, butter and childhood memories makes the moment wonderful. They can be homemade, store-bought, cheap box, Sprinkles, professionally sculpted or perfectly baked and still make you smile.

If that's not perfect, I don't know what is.

And, as I sunk my teeth into a frozen chunk of caramel butter creme (from a perfectly autumnal caramel apple cupcake), it dawned on me that I might be a touch too obsessed with baked goods. But wait until you hear how I feel about ninjas.

Top Ten Cupcakes I've Eaten in the Last Year

10. Plain Old Chocolate from Magnolia Bakery
Truth is: cupcakes from Magnolia are good, but they didn't really knock my socks off. The thing will Magnolia is the lore, the experience, the pretty-color frosting. We waited in line outside the bakery for about ten minutes as a cupcake bouncer let in a few people at a time (what a job!). Then the cupcake grabbing began! Neil and I picked up all the flavors available, which pretty much amounted to vanilla and chocolate with different types of frosting. My favorite: lavender.


9. Petal Cake from Main Street Cupcakes
This cake is so simple—almond-hinted white cake with touches of vanilla and orange covered in vanilla buttercream—and elegant that I'd call it the Audrey Hepburn of cupcakes. Main Street, in Hudson, has managed to create what I consider the best frosting on the planet. When it's fresh (they always serve it fresh, I just sometimes freeze or can't get to all my cupcakes in a sufficiently fresh timeframe), it's somehow thick yet fluffy at the same time, filled with robust yet light flavor that supplements the cake in a culinary ballet of taste and texture.


8. MSC Fluff from Main Street Cupcakes
Remember those Hostess cream-filled chocolate cupcakes topped with chocolate frosting? Well, take that idea, turn it into a homemade-tasting and fresh treat, plump up the white cream with your fluffer, change the frosting to rich ganache and change the experience into heavenly Y-U-M! And that's MSC Fluff. It's a satisfying cupcake that satisfies that cake-and-milk urge and whose only flaw is that it makes me want to eat about 60 of them.


7. Plain Old Vanilla from Buttercup Bake Shop
Same as Magnolia, just no line (when I visited). Neither of the treats really made me pack my bags and move to New York (I have other projects right now), but they satisfied my sweet tooth. I have to give the frosting award, however, to Buttercup over the other NY bakeries I visited. It wasn't too think, too much, too fat, too sweet; it was almost just right.


6. Ginger Lemon from Sprinkles
Ummm, it's spiced gingerbread cake with light lemon cheese-cream frosting. Need I say more? Sure, Sprinkles is a chain cupcake-maker who sells their delicious little tubes of cake flour at Williams-Sonoma, but who am I to judge when it tastes that good?


5. Vanilla Chai from Main Street Cupcakes
It's not a local bias I have here: MSC just has really good cupcakes. And the vanilla chai cupcake makes the Top 6 for its light chai-tasting (can you tell I like light flavors that are full but subtle?) cake and fluffy vanilla buttercream sprinkled with cinnamon. Sure, it's a little less healthy than your skim chai from Starbucks, but it goes down just as smooth.


4. Red Velvet from Saint Cupcake
First, I must admit that I could write an entire blog about how much I (heart) the city of Poartland. Hands down, one of the best cities in the world (and I've been to some pretty awesome cities). So, I don't know if it helped the city or if Portland helped Saint Cupcake in my utter enjoyment of the bakery's red velvet. It's a very traditional cupcake, I know, but the rich red velvet cake was powerfully matched with what is the thickest frosting I've ever had. In fact, Jabba the Hut would probably use this frosting to smother his enemies. Little would he know, though, his victims would die happy. Oh-so-happy. Actually, that's kind of the way I'd like to go. These cupcakes were so good, I made a special trip to the bakery before I left, carried the box to the airport and onto a two-transfer red-eye from Portland to Cleveland, and slept with them cradled in my lap the whole way.


3. Mr. Formal from Cupcake Royale
One caveat about this cupcake: it was sent across the country to me from a friend. But this determined little cupcake made the Seattle-to-Cleveland airmail trek just fine. He's a delicious chocolate cake slathered with a fluffyish vanilla buttercream and sprinkled with dark chocolate tiny-chips. It's a very simple, traditional cake, but sometimes history has a say and a veto.


2. Vanilla Sundae from Main Street Cupcakes
What I like best about Main Street is their enthusiastic approach to developing flavors for their menu. Sure, they have classic vanilla and chocolate, as well as a few other traditionals like red velvet, carrot cake and chocolate chip, but they get mad creative with flavors like Strawberries and Nutella, Chocolate Stout, Chips and Cherries and, one of my favorite experience flavors: Vanilla Sundae. It's vanilla cake bursting at the seams with fudgy filling that's doubly frosted with ganache and a dollop of vanilla buttercream. Oh, and there's a cherry on top. While I typically grab my cakes and run, I always stay at MSC to eat this cupcake in-store, like I'm at my favorite 1950s malt shop or something.


1. Bavarian Bliss from Main Street Cupcakes
I'll have you know that I keep one of these cupcakes in my freezer at all times—it's kind of a "break in case of emergency" type of thing. And the incredible thing is that, taken from a quality freezer bag, the thawed out cupcake is good as new. Bavarian Bliss is a dream-come-true for this Bavarian-anything lover. It's a tasty vanilla cake filled with a chocolate Bavarian cream (this isn't Dunkin' Donuts Bavarian... this is like a light chocolate custard made by angels) and topped with MSC's number-one chocolate ganache. It's a treat to be reckoned with. And I'm thinking I need to reckon with it soon.

(How fitting that I have no Bavarian Bliss photos? Turns out those things don't last longer enough to be photographed. Yes, they're that good.)

If I were a cupcake, what kind would I be?

If I were a cupcake, I’d be something wholly fictional, like a Vanilla-with-Chocolate-Ganache Raspberry Parade. A treat with vanilla bean cake that’s covered in a gooey chocolate ganache and filled with raspberry preserves and maybe, just maybe, a dollop of white chocolate ganache too.

Perhaps Main Street Cupcakes will add this to the menu?

Sure, it’s overboard and maybe a bit too sweet, but this cupcake works hard at balancing all that heaping ganache with something remotely healthy like antioxidant-filled raspberries. But you did ask what kind of cupcake I would be.

Now, if we’re talking about what kind of cupcake I would eat… well, that’s a different story.

I’ve set up this blog to further compartmentalize my thoughts (I also have a tri-training blog, a first-house blog, a new media blog) and use it as a vent for all my cupcaking escapades and inappropriate thoughts about ninjas. You’d think the two weren’t related, but you would be so wrong.