Sprinkles Cupcakes - Food Diary of a Fat Girl

A few weeks ago I was driving home from work and I heard an interview on the radio discussing the grand opening of Sprinkles in downtown Chicago. I don’t remember the owners name but I do remember the way she was describing her Cinnamon Sugar cupcake…I was salivating! The next day, I googled Sprinkles and sent a list of cupcakes to my husband, who works downtown, that if he ever wanted to surprise me, here’s a bunch of cupcakes I would love to try. I almost forgot about this request, until last Friday my dear husband came home with a dozen cupcakes for me for our anniversary. (What a sweetie, huh?!)

So what’s my review??? It’s mixed. The current prices online are $3.25/cupcake or $36/dozen, which is not the current prices, they are a little higher now. So between the high price and the fact that Oprah raved about these cupcakes, my expectations were really high; They did not always meet those expectations.

The first cupcake I bit into was the Cinnamon Sugar. I am normally a vanilla or chocolate fan but I craved for this cupcake ever since I heard about it. The cupcake was light and moist. I enjoyed the actual cake part but the topping was too lightly sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. It just didn’t have enough. It would have gotten an A+ had it had a bit more. It just ended up tasting a little plain. This is one of the few cupcakes I ate entirely to myself.

The majority of the cupcakes were spilt with my friends and family. One that sticks out was the Chai Latte. I normally would never order this one and I find out that is with good reason. After one bite of my half, I was not willing to finish the rest of the cupcake and neither was my friend. In my personal opinion this cupcake is a total waste of calories and I would be interested to talk to someone who likes it and hear why. It was just gross. First time I ever met a cupcake that I wouldn’t finish.

But things were looking up after that; the Pumpkin, Lemon Coconut, Red Velvet, Strawberry & Vanilla cupcakes were outstanding. I’m not surprised about the liking the Pumpkin. What’s not to love when you mix pumpkin and cream cheese? That’s hard to mess up. I was surprised about the Lemon Coconut though. I don’t like either of those flavors but their cake had just a hint of the lemon flavor and their coconut cream cheese frosting was also subtle. I liked the Red Velvet. This was actually my first time trying Red Velvet and between the moist cake and the cream cheese frosting it was a winner. The Strawberry had a really yummy frosting and I was sad that I had to spilt this one three ways. The vanilla was also enjoyable; their vanilla frosting is very creamy but the only down fall for this one was the sprinkles. I would prefer my cupcakes without and this delish frosting was coated with them.

I basically found that I REALLY liked their cream cheese and vanilla frosting and their vanilla or “spiced” cake. They were highly superior to all their chocolate counterparts. This seems to be a cupcake shop where the flavors aren’t too strong and in your face. This worked well for the vanilla or “spiced” cakes with vanilla or cream cheese frosting, but when I think of chocolate I think melt in your mouth, cocoa explosion and powerful flavor, so when I tasted these chocolate cupcakes it just wasn’t cutting it.

Overall, I think it was a cool experience to try these hyped up cupcakes but I won’t be running to the store to get more.