Vegas Part I: Cupcake Tasting!

I'm baaack!  Sorry for the long sojourn, dear readers!  But so much has been going on in this life of mine...I'm finally catching my breath and figuring everything out!  Anyways, on top of the many little things going on, on the side of life, I was also on vacation...in Sin City!  I've been back for a week now, but you know how it is...always need a vacation from your vacation!  So, I'm slowly coming back to life!  Anyways, for today's post, I thought it'd be fun to share some of my experience out there.  I did quite a lot and ate more than I should!  But that's the charm of that city right?

Ok, let's go.  So, I stayed at the Monte Carlo for this trip.  I love Monte Carlo...it still has that old school elegance and is one of the older casinos but can still stand up to all those posh new ones popping up.  Well, little did I know, there was a cupcake shop in there!  It was called The Cupcakery!  I was told that they had a location in Las Vegas where they baked all their goodies and then delivered to whichever other locations they had around the city.  I was a touch disappointed to hear that, but hey, if the cupcakes were still good, I guess I don't mind..quite..as..much...Want to check out the cupcakes?

Sorry for the terrible picture...I actually posted this picture to my Facebook and the idea of doing cupcake "research" didn't come to me until after I had already ate one cupcake...so I have to make do with this picture!  Ok, so the cupcakes were about normal price...$3.75 each (I kind of expected that, seeing as it's in a casino).  There's a break when you buy 4...I was really only going to buy 4, as I thought it was crazy to spend that kind of money on cupcakes when I bake cupcakes myself!  But darn it, the pretty case full of sparkly, colorful cupcakes made me impulsively buy a half dozen instead...$20.  So, at least I got a little break on pricing...Anyways, overall, these cupcakes were not too bad.  There was one in there that was definitely day old, or getting to be day old, or just plain overbaked.  It was super dry...that chocolate one in the corner.  Which was weird because most chocolate cakes are pretty moist.  Anyways, I thought the cakes on these cupcakes were pretty good.  They weren't too sweet, but had a nice crumb and texture.  It was pleasantly dense but not tooo dense.  Kind of like a middle ground between a chiffon cake and a regular cake.  Very good.  The only problem was there wasn't a lot of flavor in the actual cake itself.  The majority of the flavor was in the frosting...but the frosting was super sweet.  It's definitely a lot sweeter than I would have liked, which detracted from the overall experience of the cupcake.  However, the cupcakes were beautiful and full of shimmer.  We had one while walking around before dinner and saved the other five for later.  Later came the next morning!  Since I was on vacation, I decided that cupcakes for breakfast was ok...

I had truly meant to take one bite out of each flavor.  Really, I was!  However, my bites started off a bit too ambitious (which is why the first two cupcakes were totally eaten)...and as you can see, I truly enjoyed the cake itself more than the frosting.  Oh, the other problem I had with this was the packaging.  The box it came in was actually very nice, the insert very standard.  However, because the cupcakes were so top heavy, they all toppled to the side upon opening the box that morning.  The only one that stayed put was that dry chocolate one.  And we were pretty careful about holding the cupcake too.  Anyways, I thought I was done with this cupcake store, seeing as I had quite a few cupcakes from them already.  However, the next day, when I strolled pass the store, I noticed they had a few different flavors from the night before.  Of course I bought more!  I mean, this is research!

See what I mean about sparkly and beautiful?  And even though I have a problem with ingesting such colorful goods, I couldn't help it...I was instantly drawn to these colorful beauties!  The left is a lemon cake with blueberry frosting and the one on the right is a strawberry cupcake.  Strawberry has been kind of hard for me to do since the flavor is so subtle...I thought I'd sample theirs and see what I can learn!  Once again, the cakes were fabulous, frosting...not so much.  And on that strawberry cupcake, I didn't taste any strawberry in the cake itself...only in the frosting.  No worries, I still polished off both cupcakes anyways (and this was before our Wicked Spoon buffet!)

I also had a chance to try a vanilla cupcake from Sweet Surrenders at the Wynn hotel.  We were waiting for our La Reve show, so I had more than enough time to polish off another cupcake.  The price was $3.50, so not too bad.  The cupcake:

Their cupcake case wasn't as impressive as The Cupcakery's but Sweet Surrenders did offer candy and other sweet confections.  Ok, on to the cupcake.  As you can see, the cupcakes weren't as impressive as The Cupcakery's either.  The cake itself was similar to a cake box mix, so not as tasty.  What was nice was the frosting.  It really looks like a big blob of frosting, but it wasn't too sweet.  And I thought those were sugar pearls on top of the frosting (they were pretty big and I was scared I might break a tooth)..but they were actually pearly krispy dots.  Very tasty!  And a different alternative to those hard pearls, but just as pretty!

We had also walked around either The Venetian or The Palazzo when I encountered this cupcake case:

I had wanted to sample some flavors they offered but the cost of the cupcakes were definitely too rich for my blood!  Can you believe it??  $1.95 for a mini (yes, mini!!) cupcake!  Their regular sized cupcakes were like $4.50!  That was getting to be a touch ridiculous, so I took a pass.  They were super cute though.

And that, folks, concludes my cupcake tasting while in Vegas!  I'm sure there were plenty more I could have sampled, but boy, between the buffets and snacks, and delish food in general, I was stuffed the whole weekend.  In fact, I had to make myself eat those cupcakes! ;)  Until the next cupcake research! In the meanwhile, look out for Vegas Part II: Bread and Butter!  Trust me, you do not want to miss that post!!