First Taste: Erica O'Brien Cake Design

Erica O'Brien Cake Design
1242 Whitney Ave
Hamden, CT 06517
(203) 200-0350
http://www.ericaobrien.com/

Today I stopped in to pick up a few of Erica O'Brien's cupcakes. She is an amazing cake decorator and her work can be seen in magazines and all over the internet as examples of well-designed and perfectly executed cake. I had saved a tutorial and cake design from her without knowing that she was literally 8 minutes down the road from me on the SAME road I live on.

I got four cupcakes. Three cake flavors and four frosting flavors. I don't eat chocolate so I didn't get any of the chocolate flavors that she offered today. I will get some chocolate cakes in the future but my go to is going to be vanilla to judge apples to apples. I noticed that the vanilla and chocolate frostings were VERY glossy.

1: Vanilla cake and Vanilla buttercream  - I tried the vanilla cake with the vanilla buttercream. The cake was moist and very sweet, also quite light. However it was very crumbly even though it wasn't dry. The buttercream was far more butter than any other ingredient. I couldn't even tell you what was in it besides butter and vanilla. It had no texture and tasted and felt like eating butter.

2: Vanilla cake and Bailey's buttercream - this was very much like the first cake but the buttercream tasted like it had been made with a bottle of Bailey's. It could probably get you drunk.

3: Banana cake with Strawberry buttercream  - The cake was a good version of banana bread. It was moist and very banana-y. The strawberry buttercream was also very buttery but I think it was flavored with jelly and not actually strawberries. It was very sweet and it didn't quite go with the banana bread/cake.

4: Carrot cake with Cream cheese buttercream (organic?)  - Very moist cake that was very sweet. Not a lot of carrot flavor. The cream cheese frosting was actually really good and reminded me of cheesecake. It had the texture of cheesecake and good cream cheese flavor. 

In conclusion, these will not be the cupcakes for my wedding. The frosting was just awful. I was hoping to buy the top tier from her since her decorating is top notch but I don't want to eat this cake at my wedding. Oh well.

My Own Wedding Cupcakes

OK, so I started this blog as a place to keep my recipes and post photos of my own cakes as I made them and I kinda forgot about it. What I'm going to use it for now is to review the literally hundreds of cupcakes I'm going to taste in order to pick out suitable cupcakes for my guests to enjoy at my April 2014 wedding. Because I bake and because I'm picky, this is not going to be easy. I already tasted a few cupcakes and didn't post them yet but I will make posts about them and pick up one of them again (Crumbs) just so I feel thorough.

These cupcakes will all be from the New York and Connecticut area. I can't see going to Massachusetts or Rhode Island for cupcakes, though I'm sure I have done (and will do) stranger things.