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Categories: Local Flavor, Desserts [Edit]
1304 Queen Street East
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I'm verrrry late reporting on this...
Here's what I learned on the cupcake crawl: there's no such thing as 'the best ___ in the city', only 'my favourite ___ in the city'. Some people proclaimed the best cupcakes of the day to be the ones I could barely tolerate. So, to each her/his own. Here's my verdict, in order of the day's tour.
Sweet Tooth, 508 Danforth Ave.
I tried: vanilla
my rating: 2/5
We didn't actually go here but I've had Sweet Tooth cupcakes before. I don't like the icing: it's gluey, greasy and too fake, without much flavour. The cake part is too dense. These may be the prettiest cakes, but I am not a fan.
Sweet Bliss Baking Company, 1304 Queen Street East
I tried: chocolate
my rating: 5/5
The icing is thick, flavourful and sugary. I love how generously it was swirled over the surface of the perfectly weighted cake. These ones are worth the trip across the city.
It's The Icing On The Cake, 1238 Queen Street East
I tried: chocolate
my rating: 3/5
The cake is so light, it's barely there. The icing is similarly ephemeral. The taste is very much like mass-produced supermarket baked goods. Inoffensive but nothing special.
Babycakes available at Lil' Baci, 892 Queen Street East
I tried: "Sometimes I Feel Like A Nut" (pb&choc) and One Love (mango)
my rating: 4/5
These cupcakes are very sophisticated. Lil' Baci has a whole menu of Babycakes goodies - 16 gourmet flavours! I was really impressed by how natural the icing tasted. The One Love icing had the flavour of real, ripe mango. Everyone raved about these cakes. I have to admit that I prefer cupcakes to have much more icing than these rather grown-up offerings with their mature icing-to-cake ratio. Otherwise, they were wonderful.
LPK's Culinary Groove, 718 Queen Street East
I tried: mini vanilla with brown sugar icing
my rating: 2/5
Keep in mind that I'm rating the cupcakes only. Ms. LPK seemed really kind and the store looked great and there were lots of interesting products for sale. But, I did not like the cupcakes at all. The icing tasted like pure softened butter without any other flavour. The cake also tasted only of butter. It was really unpleasant. Also, the baker told us the cupcakes, available in mini size only, are made daily from whatever leftover batter and icing they have in-store. However, each mini cupcake was $2.50! Why so expensive if this is just a use for leftovers? The price was more than a standard size cupcake at most of the other stores.
Miss Cora's Kitchen, 69 Kensington Avenue
I tried: mini red velvet and mini chocolate
my rating: 5/5
Wow, I am so happy that Cora's is in my neighbourhood because I absolutely loved these cakes. Perfect sugary, gritty icing just the way I like it, a decent cake to bite into without being too dense, high quality Callebaut cocoa. These were my favourite of the day and I will be back many times.
Wanda's Pie In The Sky, 287 Augusta Avenue
I tried: vanilla with chocolate icing
my rating: 1/5
I love Wanda's pies, squares and cookies. But the cupcakes? Ew. The icing tasted like soap. The cake was so tough, I could barely swallow it. I don't know how Wanda gets pie so right and cupcakes soooo wrong. Avoid.
The Wedding Cake Shoppe, 859 College Street
I tried: cookies and cream
my rating: 4/5
Well, isn't this just the prettiest little shop around? I was pleasantly surprised to find this place and its tasty offerings just a few minutes walk from my apartment. There are interesting flavours of cupcake to choose from, such as spiced chai and dulce de leche. Like Babycakes, the icing and cake textures aren't amazing but overall, these were very good.
Sneaky Dee's, 431 College Street
I tried: vegan pumpkin chocolate chip with cream cheese icing
my rating: 3/5
This may seem like a mistake as Sneaky Dee's is more Tex-Mex punk dive bar than cupcake tea room. However, every Thursday, Sneak's gets an order of cupcakes to sell for the week. The vegan cake was super dense and it had a slightly off sweetness. However, I liked the pumpkin and chocolate chip combo so much that I was inspired to bake my own batch of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins this week.
Thanks so much, Kat F. and Michelle V. and it was a pleasure to meet so many Toronto Yelpers.
Thanks to Kat for a well organized and fun event. The official score sheets were a great item to have, especially now that I try to write this review in my diabetic coma. I still can't believe we stuck to the schedule with such a large group.
@Kat: You forgot that I also had a burrito from Big Fat Burrito while we were at Wanda's, then I had another later in the evening at Sneaky Dee's after you left.
Therefore I now crown myself Cupcake Crawl Heavyweight Champion of Toronto. All hail!!
Now down to business:
Sweet Tooth
This was quite the cupcake to have right off the bat. I had the chocolate with fudge icing. The cake was dense, just the way I like it. The icing had a rich fudge taste and was smooth and creamy. If this had been any other day it would have been the perfect treat. Unfortunately because I knew I still had 9 more cupcakes to eat it was a little much. Overall 4/5 stars
Sweet Bliss
I tried the carrot cupcake with cream cheese icing. The cake was very moist and just a hint of spice. The icing however tasted like I had just put a handful of icing sugar in my mouth. If there was cream cheese in the icing there was no way to tell. Overall 3/5 stars
It's the Icing on the Cake
The owner had prepared cupcakes for us so we had the choice of vanilla or chocolate. I opted for the vanilla. This cupcake was like eating baked air with whipped air icing on top. There was little to no flavour. I've made better cupcakes at home with a box of Duncan Hines. Overall 2/5 stars.
Baby Cake
I must have got an old cupcake or something since everyone was saying this place was their favourite. I got the mango which seemed to be stale. The cake was dry and crumbly but the icing was pretty good, not to sweet, and not overly flavoured. Overall 3/5 stars.
LPK's Culinary Groove
These were probably my favorite cupcakes of the day. I had the vanilla with brown sugar icing. The cake was moist, the icing not too sweet, the only downside was the price; $2.50 for a mini cupcake!!! Price was the only thing that stopped me from giving this place 5 stars. Overall 4/5 stars.
Miss Cora's Kitchen
What could be better than FREE cupcakes? These ones were pretty tasty. Overall 4/5 stars.
Wanda's Pie in the Sky
The difference with these cupcakes was that they were refrigerated, which was a plus for some of the crawlers today. For me not so much, I'm not really into cold icing. I like mine to be smooth and creamy. The cake in these were nice and moist and moderately dense. The icing wasn't spread to thick either. These had some sort of a filling in them that tasted like it had come out of a lab not a bakery. Overall 3/5 stars.
Had a totally badass time with nearly 40 of Toronto's finest cupcake-loving yelpers today as we hauled our collective asses across the city (OK fine - we only ended up taking two streetcars) to sample treats at nine different cupcakeries.
Zack S. talked a big game on the event listing, betting that he could easily devour ten cupcakes but ended up tapping out after only three, and in the end it was Chris P. who triumphed, having sampled an entire cupcake at eight out of nine cupcake shops - and TWO at BabyCake!!
LPK's Culinary Groove welcomed us with open arms and declared that our crew was likely the largest group of people to ever be inside the small shop at one time. The salted chevre shortbread cookie samples were the bomb, might I add. And Miss Cora's Kitchen delighted us with a heaping tray of free mini cupcake samples - what a nice treat!
Outside Miss Cora's we ambushed a friendly Edmonton backpacker with cupcake samples - she'd just arrived in Toronto today and her day had so far consisted of buying a $40 bike and stuffing her face with cupcakes courtesy of strangers!!
It was so fun to see our loyal group of cupcake testers swell into an even bigger group as the day wore on, with visits from Tammy Y., Angela L. and Cailen S on that patio at Wanda's Pie In The Sky, where my box of a dozen cupcakes didn't fare too well in the sun.
My favourite cupcakes of the day? BabyCakes by far - the Punk'd (pumpkin + cream cheese frosting) and Blue By You (dark chocolate + peppermint frosting), both topped with beautiful fondant embellishments, were the prettiest and tastiest of the day. I also loved the paper takeaway cupcake container supplied by the waitstaff. Miss Cora's Kitchen's Red Velvet minis were a close second - incredibly moist and the cream cheese frosting had extra zing.
Special kudos to the troopers who made it from the beginning to the very end for pitchers and greasy food at Sneaky Dee's!
As an addition...
I just bought a tray of mini cupcakes at Sobey's. The flavour: LEMONADE.
And I will fully admit, they were freaking delicious!
In fact, they were better than a few of the places we travelled to!
So lemony and light, and the icing was very flavourful, and the right consistency of sugar...not the whipped crisco kind.
Check them out! (They also had key lime flavour...I'll get that next!)
What a super fun day!
Kat organized a spectacular sugar-riffic day, which I completely LOVED. It…
Read more »
Another amazing day with the Yelp Toronto crew!
I am going to make the cupcake review short and head straight to the drinking/eating part of this event. Cupcake crawl was amazing, I am surprised no one threw up, I got a sunburn, and the chocolate Peanut Butter ones @ lil'baci were the best (even though I still don't like lil baci - see yelp review).
Sneaky Dees = awesome. I loved the ambiance here, I loved the waitress here and I loved the company here. Randy is the coolest - he busted out a Dell netbook running OSX and started designing circuit boards, which was the hilight of my night... until....
Jordan from Waterloo started talking about Ableton Live and the Korg PadKontrol midi controller. That is just so random and cool, that he rivaled Randy in tech-savvyness in my books.
Finally, Jeff J and Kate had some sweet DSLRs - super jealous of the Nikkor 18-200.
Really enjoyed meeting the 'Waterloo Crew', Christine and Meg, Edmonton Girl in Kensington (ps I mailed my postcard already!) and the regular CTV crew. Sam and Chris are starting to be more frequent faces, and Hanna even swung by for a bit!
Stay tuned for my chicken wings review from Sneaky Dees.
Chicken Wings crawl next? French fries crawl? Sangria crawl?
For those too lazy to read much after a day of cupcake crawlin', a one line summary: a good day was had by all, and I don't want to see another freaking cupcake for at least a week.
I joined partway in at Babycakes, and I have to say I thought they were the best - my Little Red Riding Hood actually tasted like strawberry, and not some chemist's impression thereof. LPK's were tasty, but I thought a touch pricey. That shop was definitely not intended for a group that big!
Miss Cora's were also quite tasty, and I'll definitely be heading back there to sample their pizza in the near future. The cupcake I had at Wanda's Pie in the Sky - a vanilla with chocolate icing - tasted a bit bland to me, but some of the other Yelpers on the crawl had better experiences. Another try is in order.
At this point, the group fractured somewhat, and a bunch of people decided that they'd rather have actual meat and/or vegetables rather than more cupcakey goodness. Thus having Sneaky Dee's as the final destination was an inspired idea, giving us a defined finish line that serves BOTH cupcakes (by all accounts delicious, though I wouldn't go near cake with a ten foot pole at that point) and tasty non-cake foodstuffs.
Awesome to get to meet some other local Yelpers, and kudos to the crew from Waterloo for making it out. Special thanks to Kat and Michelle for putting this thing together - too bad you couldn't make it out Michelle, hopefully next time!
Loved it! Took me a day to recover, but with out a doubt worth it the tummy ache.
Here is what went down:
I was running late but caught up with the group right before they left the first stop, Sweet Bliss. I didn't have a cupcake from here, but instead ate one from Sweet Tooth. Not my thing. Too much icing. And it was kinda that sugar-y kinda. I much prefer a rich thick icing, so this wasn't my thing. 2/5
But hey this was the first of many! You can't win 'em all.
And the next one was a winner in my book. It's The Icing On The Cake's! I opted for a chocolate cupcake. Others found that it tasted like it was made from a mix and saw this as a negative. I see it as a plus! So yummy! Not amazing or anything but cute and home-y. 4/5
Okay here comes my favorite! BabyCakes! Love love loved it! I got Punk'd, their pumpkin cupcake with cream cheese frosting. Delectable! Perfect amount of delicious icing on a tasty lil cake. They have such a yummy selection too! I'm for sure going back to try more flavors :)
And now is when I started to feel sick. Needless to say that was my last cupcake of the day. I stayed with the group walking on and checking out the other spots, ending the day at Sneeky Dee's for some nachos and great convos. I loved meeting all you other Yelpers! You're all so cool! Special thanks to Kat for doing a stellar job at organizing us. Let's all be best friends okay? Cus you're all rad. More hangouts soon :)
Let me begin with these events are not competitions. As clearly other yelpers (Chris P) will most likely beat you.
And they should be only for pure enjoyment.
This crawl has been well reviewed by others so i will keep it brief.
Amazing people get together. We walk around as a knowledgeable bunch, have fun, eat, or otherwise.
well really. if you miss out on these events, you are missing out on good times, and good people.
Thanks to Kat for a really fun and well-organized event. I especially appreciated the detailed agenda of the various stops (so one could join part way through).
As for the cupcakes themselves I would agree with Kat and several others that the Babycakes were the best of the lot (I tried the mango, very flavourful, good icing to cake ratio, not too moist/dry). The cupcakes I ate at the other locations were generally very nice in their own right (I mean, they ARE cupcakes).
The restaurant that Babycakes was housed Lil' Baci was very cool and I would recommend as a possible event location.
With the sunny afternoon weather, an enjoyable time was had by all!
I'd like to think that if I was competing in a cupcake competition, I'd be in the heavyweight class. I LOVE cake and all things cake related!
This event was the best ever. It was an adventure in food, with great people and very good times. My vote for top 'cakes were Babycakes and Sweet Tooth. The flavours at Babycakes were outstanding, exotic, and refreshing and the giant gob of frosting on the chocolate cupcake from Sweet Tooth was like a half-cup of fudge.
Ending at Sneaky Dee's was a great choice, though I wish I had more real estate in my stomach to try one of their vegan varieties. I have no idea how I managed to wolf down 1/4 of a plate of nachos after all that sugar, but somehow I did.
thanks to all for the great time! I'm going to have to hit the gym twice as hard this week but it was totally worth it.
Even though I (sadly) didn't get to attend the entire event, I had a great time at the parts I did attend! (I'm really sad I missed Babycakes though because I adore that place! The "One Love" mango cupcake is amazing!)
I managed to stop by Miss Cora's (and had a yummy mini-chocolate cupcake), Wanda's Pie in the Sky (and had a rich vanilla on vanilla cupcake with raspberries baked into the cake and a huge raspberry on top), The Wedding Cake Shoppe (and had a FREE and delicious peanut butter-chocolate cupcake), and Sneaky Dee's (and had half of a pumpkin chocolate chip vegan cupcake). All the cuppies were delicious, but I'm most excited about returning to The Wedding Cake Shoppe and checking out the rest of their scrumptious-looking flavours!
Thanks again to Kat for organizing such a fun event! This was my first time joining the Yelp crew in T.O., but it definitely won't be my last!
Man oh man, sounds like BabyCakes came out on top! Was great to track you guys down at Wanda's Pie in the Sky for some hearty, slightly melty cupcakes. Delish, thanks Kat! And yeah, really, what was up with that weird pink goo filling?
Anyway, look forward to meeting more of you in the events to come!
Kat, you rock, what a cupcake party on an absolutely gorgeous Saturday! I brought my daughter Meg along and she confessed on the way home that it was absolutely one of the most fun days we've had together in ever!!!!! :) Ok, with that being said, let's talk cupcakes baby! Jackie Gleason once said "how sweet it is". Truer words were never spoken. So here's our (mine and Meg's reflections) comments on the most fab Cupcake experience of our lives....
Our two fave spots, without question, were LPK Culinary Groove and The Wedding Cake Shoppe (which only a few of us actually made it out too). LPK, I gotta say, biggest price point but the quality of the product was unbelievable. Meg had the chocolate cupcake with Lavender Icing, I opted for Vanilla with Brown Sugar icing and hands down it was the best icing of all the cupcakes we tasted. The consistency was like eating butter. It was also the only store that I spent extra bucks in....OMG....those Spicy Chevre Noir Shortbread should be outlawed they are that damned good. My husband and I ate half the bag this evening with a bottle of wine, absolutely exquisite. Also to LPK, the owner, she was so lovely. She hiked up on a ladder and took a group picture. It was wonderful how she welcomed us all in to her shop. By the way, their salvo is "Delighting our clients by treating them, our ingredients and our world with love and respect." The products in this shop are made with real love and respect. LPK stands for Little Punk Kid. :) You gotta love a baker with purple hair!
The Wedding Cake Shoppe (which only five of us made it out to) is an absolute delight. With cupcakes such Ferraro Rocher, Cookies & Dreams, Dulce La Leche, Spicy Chai and Toffee & Chocolate we were in cupcake heaven. At the point of the day when we were saturated with cupcake killerness, this little shop came through and delighted us with beautiful presentation and absolutely exquisite cupcakes. She served us our cupcakes on individual little plates. It was just a delightful break of the day. The five of us who did make it there agreed that the group had missed out big time. Like LPK, it was a pretty shop, really lovely setting to sit in.
I loved the Sweet Tooth cupcakes. The strawberry icing with those iridescent ? sprinkles were a delight. Thanks Kat for introducing us to the cupcake sandwich concept.....bravo girl, it rocked!!
Babycakes sold out of Lil Baci had some of the most exotic tastes of the menus available, no question. They also offered up the most interesting packaging for taking the cupcakes away (noodle boxes) and while the Mango cupcake I had screamed of mango flavor, something seemed off, maybe the cake seemed a bit dry. Meg had the "I Feel Like a Nut" cupcake, a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter icing and I was actually surprised at how much I liked it. Rumour has it that the Babycakes are baked by another bakery (Yummy Stuff on Queen St.) and brought in a couple of times a week....just a rumour. So some days are better than others to buy them. I had the feeling that my Mango cupcake was a "day old" cupcake.
Wanda's Pie in the Sky....it felt like we were melting out there but I belive the consensus was that Wanda should stick to pies and leave the cupcakes to Cora's around the corner. Pretty designs on the top of the cupcakes but the gloop of pink stuff pumped into the cupcake tasted a bit like soapy suds and didn't rock our world.
Cora's Kitchen....so so with the Red Velvet but the double chocolate cupcake was supremo. It was my fav chocolate cupcake of the day. I noted that they use Callebaut chocolate which explains why the chocolate cupcake was so incredible.
The Icing on the Cake....ummmm....felt like I got a cupcake up at the local Loblaws bakery. It was light and spongy.....can you say Duncan Hines? In terms of costs, it was the cheapest of the buys at $2 for a cupcake.
Sweet Bliss, what fun place to start. The couple who run this bakery are lovely, lovely people. They keep the cupcakes refrigerated and this may have changed the consistency of the icing. Love the carrot cake muffin, really delish. Could take or leave your Red Velvet (Yummy Stuf f out on Queen St. in Parkdale is still my fave spot for Red Velvet cupcakes). The highlight of Sweet Bliss isn't their cupcakes but rather those gorgeous traditional sticky buns. Hmmmmmm......
By the time we hit Sneeky Dee's (last stop on our list) the only thing I was interested in was alcohol! :) While some ate there, we just had a drink and then opted to wonder over to Ossington Avenue and chow down on some Thai at Foxley.
All in all, it was a blast of a day. A big shout out to the the two Andrea's!!!! It was lovely to meet you both. We also really enjoyed meeting other Yelp'ers.....and looking forward to our next crawl....I say it should be Poutine or Fries....!!!!
Again, thanks Kat, had a blast. It was a real pleasure. Ok, time to detox......I got the sugar shakes!
I don't think there's any better way to say this than "Woohoo! As good as it gets!" I only wish I'd shown up earlier so I could eat more cupcakes!
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