If it comes in a pink box...it has to be good

Couture is used for articles and things that are of high quality and tailored for the customers. Couture is and should always be "in." However, a trip to the newly opened "Cupcake Couture" on Broadway leaves me wondering if in Cupcake world, "couture" has a different meaning.

Waylaid by the cute sign outside (pink and all whirls), I decided to come pay this new shop a visit. The shop is small but I think cozy is fitting. There are chairs and tables for guests to enjoy their cupcakes. The manager of the store greeted me and said that the grand opening would be the following day but he started selling cupcakes a few weeks ago.

There were around 10 types of cupcakes to choose from. Each was $2.50 but for $11, you can get half a dozen. So, I picked out six potentially very delicious ones. Coconut, Lemon, Raspberry, Black velvet, S'more, and The Couture Cupcake (their signature one). Although I picked my favorite flavors, I was a bit nervous about the cupcakes. Some of them were too small. The coconut and lemon were normal sized cupcakes but the Couture and Raspberry were half the size of normal ones. I was a bit disappointed but I know that quality trumps quantity anytime. So, the manager put my selections in a cute pink box with cupcake holders. If it comes in a pink box, it has to be good...right?


From the top left clockwise: Coconut, Black Velvet, S'More, Couture, Lemon, Raspberry

Wrong. As soon as a I came home, I tore into the cupcakes. I cut them up to check the insides (for fillings). The frosting on the cupcakes made me ill. So dense! Too sweet! Too much!! I am not much of a frosting person to begin with. I like the cake. So I hoped the cake would save the cupcake but alas. No. The raspberry cupcake was so dry I nearly choked on the crumbles. I remember the manager saying that the cupcakes were shipped "fresh" every morning from Helotes, since they lacked a baker at the new store. What time do they make them if they have to ship them out so early in the morning? Ewww....I didn't want to think about it. I bet my cupcakes were sitting in that little cooler for 20+ hours. Their signature cupcake, the Couture one, reminded me too much of a hostess cupcake. The chocolate frosting was perhaps made a few days in advance. The cake itself tasted like it came from a box...like the others. The best cupcake of the lot was the S'more. It was a little dry also but the frosting was bearable and I love marshmallows. However, my grahm cracker was soggy.



Look at how dense the frosting on this lemon cupcake was. The filling was super gross too. Hardly any lemon...too much corn starch (or whatever that was...) .

Perhaps I did not give the shop a fair shot because I came a day before the Grand Opening but I feel that the cupcakes should taste good even before the grand opening. I will try it again another time but not too quickly. I will come back when the patissier in the back is not Ms. Betty Crocker.

Anchovies

I know it is a bit weird to start my first blog with anchovies...but it seemed to make sense, as that was the most exciting thing I had today (the day I created this blog). My research lab work was getting very tedious so I decided to stop working (quite early in the morning) and go off to rent a movie for a while. My lab-mate (being a notoriously bad influence) said we should order pizza and get popcorn as well. I don't think I have ever done this; get pizza delivered while watching a movie. It is so quintessentially American...yet it dawned on me today that I lacked this experience. Thus, I agreed. I was concerned about calories and all but I decided to order a personal pan pizza. When I saw the toppings list and the options of putting it on the left, right, or entire pizza, I quickly broke into a sweat. So many choices and a simple click of the button to order! I have a hard time making decisions. My roommate refuses to go grocery shopping with me because I can't decide what brand and quantity to buy all the time! I had a hard enough time picking the crust (whole grain, thin, stuffed, etc), let alone the toppings! A quick scroll down the page and I saw the topping I knew I needed: anchovies.

I associate anchovies with things that are foul and cause fear. When I was in elementary school, we often laughed about strange pizza toppings, anchovies being number 1. I thought it was too strange that people wanted to put tiny fish on their pizzas so naturally it must have been an urban myth. Even now I still can't believe it. But to see it on the list of regular toppings, I was flabbergasted. I felt adventurous (after all I was MIA in lab, catching a movie and ordering pizza...I was already on a downward slope)...but not too adventurous. I just ordered for half of my personal pizza to be topped with anchovies, the other half with crumbled Italian sausage (I was torn between pepperoni and ham as well). I also got black olives sprinkled on the whole thing. It took almost an hour for the pizza to arrive. I was quite eager to try the pizza and had been munching on popcorn (movie theater butter flavored no less).

I found the anchovies to be just as their reputation suggested, foul. The smell was very...peculiar. The texture...odd and the taste...revolting. Well maybe revolting is too strong of a word. I just remember the salt that nearly killed my taste buds and the lingering smell. Thank goodness for the Italian sausage on the other side! I think the salt was so overpowering I had a hard time enjoying my pizza. I scraped off all the anchovies and ate the crust. My parents may like this, being used to very strongly favored Vietnamese cuisine (eg. nouc mam aka fish sauce).

Although I did not like the flavor so much (and I know many of you share my sentiments), it was rather enjoyable to try something new and have new experiences. This is what I want to blog about, my experiences with food and life in general. After all food is my life.