Planning Weekend Recap: Cake Tasting is a Gateway Drug

So this isn't so much a recap as a warning to those who have not gone through this yet.

This is your brain:

This is your brain on cake:

Our last cake tasting was almost two weeks ago and we haven't been able to get cake off the brain since! We've been able to be good, for the most part, but it's getting more and more difficult as time goes on. Last week we used the excuse of sampling the local cupcake bakeries to go and check out Polka Dot Bake Shop which is right around the corner (yes, trouble).

Douglas and I went in expecting to get maybe two cupcakes each to sample and enjoy. Once we got there and saw what was in the case, however, we were up to six or eight cupcakes we wanted to get (of course three of those were the grasshopper pie flavor - definitely worth it). Each cupcake is $2.50. We were so near to 10, which would have been $25, that I just decided to say "screw it" and get a dozen for the same price. We walked out of Polka Dot with a full dozen and included some chocolate-free ones for Louis to try. The full dozen made it home, but about four cupcakes didn't make it through lunch - two of them being the grasshopper pie flavor. The grasshopper pie is a chocolate cupcake with some milk chocolate in the cupcake with mint buttercream icing with an Andes Mint on top - and we all know what a sucker I am for Andes Mints *drool*. Getting that out of the way, I can now share the other flavors we tried:
chocolate with chocolate buttercream
chocolate with vanilla buttercream
yellow cake with chocolate buttercream
yellow cake with vanilla buttercream
red velvet with cream cheese icing
german chocolate cake with a coconut/nut topping
cotton candy (dyed yellow cake with pink sugary cotton candy flavored buttercream)

They were all quite tasty. The cotton candy one surprised me. It was very sweet, which was expected, but it wasn't overkill.

Of course, those were the offerings last Friday, and most of them are on the menu, again, for tomorrow. So tempting!

And then, of course, there's Just Baked on the other side of town.

They won me over with their chocolate maple bacon cupcake. It doesn't sound that great, but it tasted exactly like biting into a thick warm Belgium waffle, drenched in maple syrup, topped with a big pat of butter with a side of bacon. Seriously, my mouth is watering as I type this. If you like breakfast, you'll dig this cupcake. I'm really glad these guys are across town because I might become too much of a regular otherwise (did I mention they have Oregon Chai?). Flavors we've tried include:
chocolate maple bacon
signature chocolate
sugar cookie
vanilla vanilla
french toast
chocolate mint

Flavors we'd like to try include:
chocolate Amaretto
root beer float
churro
hot fudge sundae
campfire smores

Again, *drool*

Ever since doing our cake tastings and deciding on a baker, we haven't been able to stop thinking about how good the cakes by Lisa were and we've been having to try to compensate. The key is moderation, but we've eaten more cake in the past two weeks than we've had in probably all of last year. What can I say? We've tasted blood and we want more, more, MORE, MORE!

The upside is that I've learned that the cupcake shops here in Charlotte are much better than the ones in Georgetown. Georgetown Cupcake has a terrible icing to cake ration and their cake leaves a lot to be desired (dry, lack of flavor, etc.).  They appeared to be selling on icing and whatever they shoved into the icing as a topper. Baked & Wired had much better cupcakes than Georgetown Cupcake (also known as DC Cupakes). Neither, however, were as irresistible as Just Baked or Polka Dot.

If we resist going to either bakery tomorrow (they both have really good flavors on Friday), I might have to attempt to make my own batch of mint buttercream and whip up some cupcakes.

So, fair warning - when planning to do cake tastings, don't think that you'll only be bad during that day or weekend. It will stick with you until you O.D. and it's taking quite a while to O.D.