And the winner is.....

Shari C. !

Congratulations Shari! You won the Cupcake Race contest for the readers' favorite cupcake art! All of the finalists were really great, but with 48% of the vote, the Cupcake Race readers voiced a clear favorite!

The Grand Prize winner, Harper, will be receiving a t-shirt with his cupcake drawing on it, and Shari will receive a $10 gift certificate to Sweet Honeybee Bakery, on Montrose Ave. (one of our favorite bakeries!). We'd love to hear from you and Harper if you would like to write something on the blog about what inspired your idea and why you like art...or anything you'd like to write.

And finally, congratulations are in order to everyone who participated in the contest to create some really fun, inspired and interesting art! We had a lot of fun with the contest here, and we hope you did too.

Keep cupcaking!

Don't forget to vote your favorite!

There is still one more prize to give away! The Grand Prize went to Harper F., whose drawing of a cupcake on the rampage can be seen in the previous post. But there is still First Prize to award, which will be determined by the winner of the online poll (see sidebar). Voting ends at 11:59pm on November 19th.

Click here to view the finalists and vote.

The winner of First Prize will get some suitable award -- probably a gift certificate for a couple of cupcakes -- and, of course, have his or her drawing featured on cupcakerace.com.

The entries are in, and the winner Is....

The entries for the Cupcake Race Art Contest are in! If you recall, the kids at Pilgrim Lutheran School in Chicago were invited to create original cupcake-themed artwork for the contest. You can see all of the excellent drawings by clicking on the Flickr link on the sidebar at the right.

Before announcing the winners, let me remind you how the contest works. Cupcake Race will select the top five (5) drawings from among all the entries. From these, one Grand Prize winner will be selected by Cupcake Race. The Grand Prize winner will receive a t-shirt in addition to having his or her art featured on cupcakerace.com. In addition, his or her entire class will receive cupcakes!

Of the remaining four (4) finalists, a First Prize winner will be selected by readers (you!) in an online poll. The First Prize winner will also have his or her artwork featured on cupcakerace.com.

Vote for your favorite!

And now, Grand Prize in the Cupcake Race Art Contest goes to.....

Harper F.!

Peter People Eater

Congratulations Harper! I just love that angry, determined look on Peter People Eater's face! It says, "Payback time, people!" Thank you for sharing your art with us!

Now, for the online poll...

The remaining 4 finalists' artwork is shown below. Please vote for your favorite at the top of the page. The online poll closes at 11:59 PM on November 19th.

(Click to enlarge any of the drawings below)




















Cast your vote now!

Announcing the Cupcake Race Art Contest!

Cupcake Race is sponsoring its first ever contest! The kids at Pilgrim Lutheran School in Chicago will be creating original art that represents some idea they have that involves cupcakes. It might be their concept of what the "perfect" cupcake would look like. Or maybe their interpretation of what a cupcake's worst nightmare would be. What would a family of cupcakes do for vacation? Whatever concept or idea regarding cupcakes they wish to convey. The basic guideline is that it has to be original and it has to cupcake-themed.

Cupcake Race will narrow the contestants down to the top five (5), and choose one (1) Grand Prize winner. The winner will receive a t-shirt and have his or her art featured on cupcakerace.com. In addition, the winner's ENTIRE CLASS will receive cupcakes!

The remaining four (4) finalists will participate in an online poll, where readers get to vote for their favorite of the four. The winner of the on-line poll will also have their art featured on cupcakerace.com.

Both the Grand Prize winner and the winner of the online favorite will get to write on cupcakerace.com about what inspired their idea and anything they want to share about their art, if they so desire.

The students will be submitting their entries by November 7th, and the entries will be posted online as soon thereafter as possible. Voting for the online poll will run for ten (10) days.

Finally, I want to thank my blogger friend Beck for collaborating and making this idea possible! Way to go Beck!!

Okay kids, go forth and cupcake!

Su Van's Bake Shop

3351 N Lincoln, Chicago, IL


Chocolate cupcake with plain buttercream frosting

Price: $2.77
Weight: n/a
Value: n/a

Frosting The nice lady at the counter explained to me that the frosting was made with a "rue," which I learned was a mixture of flour and milk added to the buttercream. This, she says, enables you to make the buttercream real light and helps keep it from being too sweet. It worked. The frosting was super-light, almost like a whipped cream, and not too sweet...and still had the graininess that I like so much. The only drawback was that it just seemed a little "lumpy" or coagulated. I had to knock it down half a point for that. Rating 8.0/10

Cake Good substance, for the most part moist, but a little bit on the dense side so in some places it tended to seem just a little dry. Chocolate flavor was really good though. Rating 8.0/10

Overall Su Van's is just 1/2 block north of Dinkel's, so it has formidable competition. (But Su Van's is really more of a brunch/lunch place, which Dinkel's is not.) The thing I noticed about the cupcakes here is that they all look great without trying to be perfect. They just seem to me to look like what a cupcake should look like, if that makes any sense. I find that a lot of times cupcakes that have that "perfect" look are the ones that don't necessarily taste that great. But these were well put-together, good proportions of frosting to cake, and just looked really clean. And the one I had tasted really good. Overall Rating 8.00/10.0

Cupcake Race Goes to Austin, TX!

Hey Cupcake!
1600 S Congress, Austin, TX


Chocolate cupcake with plain buttercream frosting

Price: $2.00
Weight: n/a
Value: n/a

Frosting The frosting was light and very lick-able, and the best way I can describe the texture is that it had a chalky or powdery feel -- which is not to say I didn't like it. I liked it very much. It was perhaps just a tiny little bit too sweet, but overall, it was a very respectable frosting. Rating 8.25/10

Cake The cake was perfectly moist and tender, and it had a dark/bittersweet chocolate flavor, which paired nicely with the sweet frosting. Rating 9.25/10

Overall I did some Googling for cupcakes in Austin and came across Hey Cupcake! On my way, I envisioned a cupcake stand, but I didn't picture a cupcake stand fashioned out of an Airstream trailer parked in an empty lot. But, hey, it's Texas afterall.

I was staying at the Four Seasons (love those corporate rates!) and asked the concierge for the address of Hey Cupcake! With the same seriousness and professionalism as if I had just asked for reservations at the finest steakhouse in Austin and orchestra prime seats at the opera, he found the information and printed it for me. Then, although I had asked for a mere taxi, the valet instead called the hotel driver. So there I am, being chauffeured in a shiny black Lincoln Continental, to a gravel parking lot where there sits only a cupcake trailer and a couple of patio tables. I can only imagine what people thought as they watched me step out of the limo, walk up to the trailer and order a cupcake. The driver offered to stay and wait for me, but, feeling slightly embarrassed, I told him I'd just try to find a taxi on the way back.

So the cupcake: I thought this was a really great cupcake. The frosting was just a little too sweet for my taste, otherwise I'd probably give the cupcake a 9.25 overall. But as it was, it couldn't have been much better. Overall Rating 8.75/10.0

New T-Shirt

Flourish Bakery Café

1138 W Bryn Mawr, Chicago, IL


Yellow cupcake with plain buttercream frosting

Price: $1.49
Weight: 3 3/4 oz (106g)
Value: $0.397/oz

Frosting The frosting is so light, soft and pillowy that you can literally lick it off the cupcake like you're eating an ice cream cone, rather than having to bite into it. Like my favorite frostings, it has a grainy texture and only a very slightly greasy feel . Rating 9.5/10

Cake Normally I try to get a chocolate cupcake with plain frosting, but they didn't have any this day. (They had chocolate/chocolate, but I decided to go for the plain frosting rather than the chocolate cake.) The yellow cake was very soft and moist. It had a nice flavor, but the only possible negative thing I would say is that it tasted perhaps a little too much like a cake you might get from a Duncan Hines cake mix, and it still had a somewhat "batter-like" taste. Rating 8.0/10

Overall I just recently discovered this bakery/cafe while driving around in Edgewater. My first trip back was to have a sandwich (turkey, bacon & Swiss on cranberry-pecan bread, with fruit chutney, which was excellent), and I drooled over the pastries and baked goods.

I really like this place. It's large, bright, clean and happy, and the staff is very friendly and helpful. I'm only somewhat familiar with the area, but I think the stretch of Bryn Mawr where Flourish is located, between Broadway and Sheridan, has gone through a little renaissance over the past few years. (I'm told Flourish has been there for about 3 years.) The neighborhood still has some lingering elements of its former "sketchiness," but aside from the wandering local half-way house residents, for the most part it seems to be well into the up-side of up-and-coming.

As for the cupcake, overall it was very, very nice. I especially liked the frosting, and there's no doubt I'll be going back try the chocolate version. Probably today. Overall Rating 8.75/10.0

Sweet Cakes Bakery

935 N Damen, Chicago

Chocolate cupcake with white chocolate buttercream frosting

Price: $2.21
Weight: 4 5/8 oz (131g)
Value: $0.478/oz

Frosting The frosting is smooth and greasy, with no hint of graininess. Regarding the taste, I have to say that after having tasted a few white-chocolate flavored buttercreams, I have decided that there is no place in a buttercream frosting for white chocolate. The flavor combination just doesn't seem to work in my opinion, and here is why I think so: Buttercream is made with butter, right? And despite the name, white chocolate isn't actually chocolate at all. It's actually a substance that is extracted from the "chocolate liquor," a thick liquid of fermented cacao seeds that have been ground up. By pressing this liquid, it separates into cocoa solids and cocoa butter, which is also known as white chocolate. The cocoa butter is essentially the vegetable fat of the cacao bean. So you're really just mixing two fats together with a white chocolate buttercream; it's kind of like making the buttercream frosting with part butter and part Crisco. The white chocolate flavor doesn't even really seem come through the buttercream or give it any distinctiveness, other than perhaps to make it a little greasier. The taste and texture of this frosting was kind of like biting into a cool stick of butter. There was some sweetness, but it was mostly bland. So let's just agree on this one thing: bakeries should just cease and desist on the white-chocolate flavored buttercream. Rating 5.0/10

Cake Oh, the cake. After the experience with the frosting, I wasn't expecting this. Possibly the best chocolate cake I have ever tasted. The chocolate flavor was rich, deep, sublime. The texture was moist, chewy and substantive. It is just so unfortunate that they paired it with a mediocre frosting. It merits a perfect rating. Rating 10.0/10

Overall I might have to re-evaluate my rather simplistic rating system. Basically, my Overall Rating is just the unweighted average of the individual ratings of the frosting and cake. I guess I can't decide if I like that method in this particular case. I liked the chocolate cake on this cupcake more than any other so far -- in my view it was almost off the charts. But the frosting was disappointing. In the end, my Overall rating is 7.5, but I'm left wondering would I really prefer this cupcake -- this particular cupcake -- over, say, a Dinkel's cupcake (7.0) which I like very much and which doesn't have any drawback like this one did?

So, I didn't like the frosting on the Sweet Cakes cupcake, but while it was a distraction to the overall experience, it wasn't totally awful. This is where the numerical rating just doesn't do a very good job, because if I had a choice between this particular cupcake and the average Dinkel's cupcake, I would take Dinkel's. Sure, I could always lower the frosting score so that the Overall Rating would be lower than 7.0, but I didn't feel that the frosting deserved a 4.0 rating, for example.

Oh well, I'm too lazy to come up with anything more sophisticated, so I guess I'll settle for imperfect. Besides, it's only a cupcake. And I can't believe I've even written this much. Is anyone still reading? Overall Rating 7.5/10.0

A Taste of Heaven

5401 N Clark St, Chicago

Chocolate cupcake with chocolate buttercream frosting and chocolate ganache

Price: $2.70
Weight: 4 1/2 oz (128g)
Value: $0.600/oz

Frosting The ganache covering the buttercream frosting is rich and way-super-chocolaty. The flavor in the chocolate buttercream itself, however, was a little hard to discern. The buttercream was a little dense and seemed to have more the consistency of a paté than a frosting. Without the ganache, I would probably give the frosting a 7.0. Rating 8.5/10

Cake The texture of cake was chewy, substantive and moist, with a larger crumb. The chocolate flavor was fine -- not too subtle, not overbearing. Rating 8.5/10

Overall This was overall a very nice cupcake. A word of warning, however: The ganache is so rich and chocolaty that this really should be a 2-person cupcake. I have a pretty high sugar tolerance, but even I felt light-headed and dizzy after eating this whole cupcake (and that says something).

Apart from the cake, however, I have to say I have been disappointed more than a couple of times with the service at A Taste of Heaven. The last time I went there was about 3 years ago, and I actually had stopped visiting because of the service. Previously, it seemed that the employees were more interested in talking to each other than they were waiting on the counter; this time, it seemed like I waited an unnecessarily long time for service, which was made to seem even longer by the fact that there was an employee just standing next to the counter doing nothing while another worker was helping the person in front of me. My friends will say that I have perhaps an abnormally low tolerance for poor or even mediocre service, so in fairness I should point that out; I do tend to be overly critical about such things.

Okay, I'm a diva. I'll admit it.

Overall Rating 8.50/10.0