Philly Cupcake

1132 Chestunt Street (at 12th)
Philadelphia, PA 19102
215-625-4888

Philadelphia, eager to shed it's image as the backwards Italian-American anger-filled crime hole it's thought of by anyone in, around, or far away from Philly, has upped it's culinary cred beyond "steak wit". Part of this culinary up trend is the humble cupcake. In the last several years the cupcake has moved beyond the case mixed with other sweet confections and cakes to it's own stores and it's own trucks. When it becomes the official food of some city or state, then we know it's hard work will have paid off.

Philly Cupcake is one such shop. The kitsch behind Philly Cupcake is that it's a kids Victorian-era dollhouse writ large, and filled with all of the sweets the kid was denied. The color scheme is pink pink pink, and blue (but a bright sky blue, so don't worry). Cupcakes are behind a series of cabinets that look as if they have seen a good century of wear (yet remain pink). These are then offset by a series of ropes, either to treat the cupcakes as celebrity, or to keep grubby germ-infested hands off of them. With an open kitchen (and hence they don't allow dogs in, but who, really, wants dog hair in their frosting) and the entire size of a small storage shed, it feels like a mix of high class, walk-in closet, and revolving door.

All of the cupcakes are lined up along one wall, evenly spaced, waiting to be chosen by brave carb-loving folks. The cupcakes range from your baseline Vanilla to muffin flavors (ex: Sweet Potato,) to specialties for holidays. There are also other confections which are basically adding sweet fatty insult to sweet fatty injury, such as the chocolate covered Twizzlers or the chocolate covered Oreos (both copyrighted by their respective companies, so keep back lawyers). You can generally find something here for your sweet tooth, and if you eat enough of these, one tooth is probably all you will wind up with.

I went twice, once this past March, and again in June. From the cupboards were chosen five cupcakes, and one confection. The sugar rush, crash, and diabetes come free. There were the following: Vanilla Vanilla, Chocolate Vanilla, Red Velvet, an apple cobbler turned cupcake (the Jewish Apple Streusel Cupcake) , and a specialty Bailey's Irish Cream that was available around St. Patrick's day. When they pack them, they want to keep them safe, so they put them in a plastic cup. Cute, but major waste.

First, the baselines; after all, if you can't get the basics right, how can you get the others right, right? Vanilla Vanilla means vanilla flavored cake with vanilla flavored buttercream frosting. Wow, disappointing. The frosting was the best part, and it wasn't all that good. The cake was thick and not moist, which is a no-no for cupcakes. There was also no vanilla taste, but there was butter, which came as an after-taste. The frosting was smooth as silk and buttery, but again, the vanilla came as an after-taste.

The cake of the red velvet was not bad: moist, chewy, held together, red. The cream cheese frosting, however, was incredibly sweet and slightly dry. Not the best, not the worst, but due to sugar content, I wouldn't order another without dental insurance.

The chocolate cupcake cake half was by far the best. Super moist to slightly sticking to the fingers level, definite taste of cocoa, and airy enough to not be heavy. The buttercream frosting was the same as on the vanilla cake.

With those turning me into more buttercream than man, I bravely dived into the apple crumb-cake impostor. Dry, simply put. The apples didn't add moisture and even seemed to have had their flavor sucked out. It just was not as good as it looked, which is disappointing when you have high hopes.

Lastly, the Irish cream. Now because this cupcake is a special, normally reviewing it isn't too helpful, but it speaks to the bakery's abilities, so here goes: The frosting was good: Light, fluffy, not sweet. The cake, however, was dense to the point of almost being too much, as it fell apart and stuck to the foil too easily.

So out of 5 cupcakes, there were really two with decent to good cake, but none of them had good frosting.

The chocolate covered Oreo was ok. The specific tastes of oreo overpowered the chocolate (I had milk, but you can get dark and white chocolate versions). The chocolate held the cookie together, so there were fewer crumbs than normally.

No eating in the store, there just isn't room. Recently they added a handful of tables on the side, They also serve other baked goodies and coffee, and now have an ice cream window on 12th street.