![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Cupcakes, As Promised
Oct. 18th, 2011 06:42 pmSo. Cupcakes.
Tiny. Trendy. All over the damn place.
Having turned up my nose repeatedly at the hottest cupcake joint in the Metro Detroit area because their cakes are simply not that good, I was feeling the lack of cupcake moderne action in my corner of Dearborn. Westborn bakery sells, in addition to Just Baked's prepackaged offerings, some housemade cakes so piled with icing they look more like cones of frozen custard. They're OK in a pinch, but not great. Bartz Bakery and Monroe Bakery swing more to old-style cupcakes-- chocolate or yellow cakelets topped with whirls of sugared shortening. The ones at Bartz are slightly better and more ambitious; I stick to other forms of baked goods at Monroe, like the oatmeal-date cookies.
Then Iversen's, the stuffy-looking place on Outer Drive, opened an "express" location in my corner strip mall. And they turn out to be the local cupcake paradise, selling small cakes with a moderate amount of icing and a different flavor line-up every day. Last week I got a pistachio cupcake, and the green buttercream was the real deal. Yesterday it was a little chocolate cake topped and filled with peanut-butter cream, so good the guy who owns the diner next door was chowing down on one when I dropped in.
I'm hooked. Their website is so staid, and so aimed at wedding cakes, that I had no idea they were a cupcake place that also makes wonderful danishes and amazingly flavored bar cookies. But the cakes have a good texture, the frosting levels are somewhat excessive but nowhere near the gloppy piles at Westborn, and-- crucially-- the flavor combos work. I'm not eating them just because they're cupcakes and I'm bored; I'm actively enjoying them.
Still not the best cupcakes I've had ever, but a hell of a lot better than what I've been trying around the area.
Tiny. Trendy. All over the damn place.
Having turned up my nose repeatedly at the hottest cupcake joint in the Metro Detroit area because their cakes are simply not that good, I was feeling the lack of cupcake moderne action in my corner of Dearborn. Westborn bakery sells, in addition to Just Baked's prepackaged offerings, some housemade cakes so piled with icing they look more like cones of frozen custard. They're OK in a pinch, but not great. Bartz Bakery and Monroe Bakery swing more to old-style cupcakes-- chocolate or yellow cakelets topped with whirls of sugared shortening. The ones at Bartz are slightly better and more ambitious; I stick to other forms of baked goods at Monroe, like the oatmeal-date cookies.
Then Iversen's, the stuffy-looking place on Outer Drive, opened an "express" location in my corner strip mall. And they turn out to be the local cupcake paradise, selling small cakes with a moderate amount of icing and a different flavor line-up every day. Last week I got a pistachio cupcake, and the green buttercream was the real deal. Yesterday it was a little chocolate cake topped and filled with peanut-butter cream, so good the guy who owns the diner next door was chowing down on one when I dropped in.
I'm hooked. Their website is so staid, and so aimed at wedding cakes, that I had no idea they were a cupcake place that also makes wonderful danishes and amazingly flavored bar cookies. But the cakes have a good texture, the frosting levels are somewhat excessive but nowhere near the gloppy piles at Westborn, and-- crucially-- the flavor combos work. I'm not eating them just because they're cupcakes and I'm bored; I'm actively enjoying them.
Still not the best cupcakes I've had ever, but a hell of a lot better than what I've been trying around the area.
