Remember my girls night I told you about last week? Well, we went crazy for dessert, so far out, it needed it’s own post. Welcome to Balki Bartakamous’s Iron Cupcake Chicago. Why have Balki from the 1980s tv show Perfect Strangers sponsor the cupcake challenge? Why the hell not? Reasons Why Balki Rocks: 1. Originally from the tiny island of Mypos, which is fun to say. 2. He owns an awesome stuffed sheep called Dimitri. 3. He rocks a mullet–and makes it work. 4. The Dance of Joy. Nuff said. The concept was really just a good excuse to shove an assload of delicious and gourmet cupcakes down our pieholes.
I went to four bakeries in Chicago that were known for their cupcakes: Bleeding Heart Bakery, Phoebe’s Cupcakes, More & Sugar Bliss. I purchased two cupcakes from each bakery, and we split each cupcake into quarters for easy sharing. The first stop was Bleeding Heart Organic Bakery.
I love this place–it is so colorful on the inside and outside, and their baked good are just as fun. I picked two cupcakes: a chocolate peanut butter bacon cupcake, and a curry cupcake ($3.25 USD each). The first was a chocolate cupcake with a homemade peanut butter frosting and a piece on bacon on top.
As you can imagine, this was freaking delicious, but rich as hell. Each component, the cake, the frosting, tasted delicious on their own, but I wish one of the two were a bit lighter. Also–more bacon. Not a ton, but I bet some chopped bacon in the frosting wouldn’t hurt nobody. That being said, I would totally buy this one again. Next was the curry cupcake.
This was such a clusterfuck of spices, it was hard to tell what tasted like what. I believe the cake had pineapple and coconut in it, and the frosting had curry, cardamom, and cayenne powder. Indian seasonings are so freaking strong, I feel like what this cupcake needed was a lighter hand on the spices in the frosting and cake. More sweetness from the cupcake would support a slightly more savory frosting, and trust me, a little curry and cardamom goes a LONG way. This was the only cupcake I couldn’t finish. The next store we hit up was Phoebe’s Cupcakes, a relatively new player in the Chicago cupcake scene. This was the first of three cupcake-only bakeries.
Like the exterior awning, the interior of Phoebe’s Cupcakes was decorated in cool blues and dark woods, giving off a very masculine feel. The cupcakes were presented in a giant glass box of shelves, lined in dark wood. It felt trendy, like shopping for cupcakes in a department store. I purchased two cupcakes from Phoebe’s: the salted caramel cupcake and the pina colada cupcake ($2.50 USD each). The first cupcake was a white cake with salted caramel frosting, and I was SO excited for this one. You might remember that I made a particularly awesome salted caramel frosted cupcake a while back, so I had high expectations for this one.
This was a decent cupcake, and was highly rated by at least three people. Personally, I appreciated the drizzle of caramel in the center of the cupcake, but I felt like overall, the cupcake lacked flavor. The frosting didn’t taste like much of anything at all, let alone salted caramel, and perhaps because I have personally made an awesome salted caramel frosting, I did not love this one. The other cupcake we tried from Phoebe’s was their pina colada, which was a coconut cupcake with pineapple frosting ($2.50USD).
I was a fan of this cupcake. You could taste the coconut in the cake (although, it could always use more, maybe some actually pieces of coconut), and the frosting tasted like sweet, ripe fresh pineapples. The cake had a deliciously tender crumb, and it was just an all-around good, creative cupcake. The third place we hit up was More Cupcakes. I feel like this shop looks like every other expensive clothes shop that surrounds it. Unlike the first two, the shop offers no place for patrons to sit and enjoy the cupcakes, and displays the cupcakes in a very contemporary way, using the cupcakes to form a wall around the attendants.
More is a cupcake-only bakery, and they have a line of savory cupcakes you won’t find anywhere else. I went with one sweet cupcake, their passionfruit meringue, and one savory, their foie gras cupcake ($3.50 USD each). The first cupcake was the passionfruit meringue, which had a white cake base filled with passionfruit curd, topped with meringue that was lightly toasted on the outside, creamy on the inside($3.50USD).
This was another good cupcake, a great balance of sweet and sour, and a nice variety of textures. The cake was tender, the passionfruit meringue had just enough tang to it, and the meringue was a delicious mix of lightly crisped outside and fluffy, marshmallow-esque inside. Just a really good, balanced cupcake. The other cupcake from More was the foie gras, which had a buttermilk cake base, a cherry center, and foie gras frosting, topped with a cherry ($3.50 USD). This was the only cupcake that was fully savory.
In retrospect, this cupcake didn’t stand a chance against it’s competitors, and that is my fault. All the other cupcakes were predominantly sweet, and HELLO, served for dessert. While a foie gras frosted cupcake certainly has a place on this earth, it is not in the dessert category. So inherently, this cupcake scored low. Perhaps a future savory cupcake challenge is in order? The final shop was Sugar Bliss Cake Boutique. Sadly, my camera batteries died upon arrival, preventing any actual shots of the shop. I can tell you that it had a pretty run of the mill awning, and the insides were similar to Phoebe’s with darker colors and a department store vibe. And this was another cupcake-only bakery. I purchased one vanilla coconut cupcake and one black & white cupcake ($3.50 USD each). The first cupcake we tried was the black & white, which was a dark chocolate cake with a vanilla buttercream frosting.
This was a VERY dark chocolate cupcake, and while the buttercream was good, it didn’t blow me away. I liked this cupcake, but it wasn’t something that I would crave. That being said, Claire loved this cupcake. Finally, we had Sugar Bliss’s vanilla coconut cupcake, which was a Madagascar bourbon vanilla cake with coconut cream cheese frosting ($3.50 USD).
This was a favorite across the board. It was a flavorful, moist cake, and the cream cheese in the frosting really made the coconut pop. Can I just how much I love cream cheese frosting as a base? I use it for my salted caramel frosting, my strawberry frosting, pretty much anything tastes good with it, and it really lightens up heavy, rich flavors. LOVE IT. Several of Sugar Bliss’s cupcakes have cream cheese bases, so this may have to be a shop I regularly visit. And here are the final results: #1 Vanilla Coconut cupcake from Sugar Bliss #2 and #3 Tie between Phoebe’s Salted Caramel and Bleeding Heart’s Chocolate Peanut butter Bacon #4 and #5 Tie between Phoebe’s Pina Colada & More’s Passionfruit Meringue #6 Bleeding Heart Curry #7 Sugar Bliss’s Black & White #8 More’s Foie Gras It was a hard job, but someone had to do it, if only for Balki’s sake.
~LTG! **************************************************** Try out the Balki Iron Cupcake Chicago Challenge yourself! Bleeding Heart Organic Bakery 1955 W Belmont Ave Chicago, IL 60657 (773) 327-6934 www.thebleedingheartbakery.com Phoebe’s Cupcakes 3327 N. Broadway Chicago, IL 60657 (773) 868-4000 www.phoebescupcakes.com More 1 E Delaware Pl Chicago, IL 60611 (312)951-0001 www.morecupcakes.com Sugar Bliss Cake Boutique 115 N. Wabash Chicago, IL 60602 (312)845-9669 www.sugarblisscakes.com ******************************** Note~As Susan pointed out in the comments, there is an actual Iron Cupcake Chicago event! If you would like to learn more about it or just drool over the pictures, check it out here.
