Starbucks’ Chocolate Cupcake

Sure, Starbucks didn’t really make the cupcake, they brought them in from a bakery, but at $1.85 apiece are these mass produced beauties of baked goods as good as they look?

Appearance

It’s pretty all right. The cake looks moist, the frosting is shiny and bountiful and shavings of white chocolate crown the whipped top.

Smell

It smells like your basic chocolate cupcake but with a hint of coconut. It came in this nifty carrying case though, to protect against clumsiness and smashing.

Taste

When I cut it the cake part broke apart a bit, leaving some stuck to the bottom of the wrapper, which didn’t affect the taste, just made it much messier to eat. The cake of the cupcake is good, not the worst, but nice. The frosting is a sugar burst, but smooth sugar and with hints of coffee or espresso in it. There wasn’t a descriptor by the cupcakes other than chocolate, vanilla or red velvet, so if you’re not a coffee person, you won’t like the frosting much. It wasn’t over powering, just nicely folded in.

Bottom line: For $1.85 if you want a fun sweet afternoon treat with your latte, it’s worth picking one up.

I did get to try the vanilla bean one as well, which I liked more. The white cake of the cupcake was better developed (though very un-flavorful of anything other than cake) the frosting had speckles of vanilla bean throughout and golden sanding sugar on the sides. The frosting alone I could have eaten by the spoonful until I got sick, provided that there was a bowl of sanding sugar for me to dip the same said spoon in.