Ingredients Archives: Frosting

I feel bad for anyone whose dietary restrictions limits their intake of baked goods and other sweets. Vegans and those with gluten intolerance have it the hardest, but Sprinkles has created three variations on a classic cupcake flavor that lets more people experience the pure joy of partaking in a frosting-covered single-serving cake. This morning, I taste tested all three versions of their red velvet cupcakes to see how they are different and which one’s the best.

San Diego’s food truck scene has reached critical mass. It seems like every weekend, there is at least one food truck event, ranging from small gatherings, to full-blown festivals. Hoping to find something in the middle, I headed to 57 Degrees, for their monthly gathering of food trucks, which happens on the third Friday of every month. Fifteen food trucks set up shop in the parking lot, including a few options for sweets.

After gorging myself on savory items from The Gathering Spot, I almost didn’t have enough room for dessert, but leaving without something sweet just wasn’t an option. The Sweet Treats Truck had several tempting options, including peanut butter brownies, red velvet whoopie pies, and eclairs, but once I laid eyes on the German chocolate cupcakes, my dessert dilemma was solved.

San Diego’s vibrant beer culture is so pervasive that it seems like a perfectly natural place for a bakery like Pubcakes — where you can get cupcakes made with beer. The combination may at first seem strange, but after sampling several different flavors, I can confidently say that not only does the combination of beer and cake work, it’s magical.

The five flavors we sampled were Irish Carbomb (a deep chocolate cupcake frosted with Guinness and chocolate whiskey ganache), Stone Portzilla (made with Stone Smoked Porter, a coffee ganache, and caramelized coconut), Top Ten Cake (with Karl Strauss IPA and sweet and spicy cherry frosting), Cup ‘O Hefen (with Ballast Point Wahoo Wheat and a citrusy icing), and one of the newest cupcake creations, a ManzaNeed It! (with Manzanita’s Gillespie Brown Ale, black pepper, and Nutella buttercream).

In Hillcrest, San Diego’s gayborhood just north of the downtown core, dessert options are abundant. One of the best places to satisfy a sweet tooth is Babycakes, a cafe/bar that serves some of San Diego’s biggest and most frosting-laden cupcakes.

Cupcakes come in a mind-boggling variety of flavors, including classics like vanilla, chocolate, and red velvet, plus inspired flavors like blood orange, guava mango, and peanut butter and jelly. For $3.50 you get a larger-than-usual cupcake topped with a towering swirl of icing.