Review: Crumbs - Signature Cupcakes

Crumbs Bake Shop is a cake shop chain known mostly for their premium cupcakes. Their cupcakes are a might bit bigger than your typical cupcakes and will run about $3 to $4 depending on the selection (some are available in smaller sizes but I didn't see any). Currently, Crumbs has locations in five states (CA, CT, DC, NJ, and NY) with locations set to open in IL and VA. They ship anywhere in the continental U.S. though.

I visited a Crumbs for the first time very recently and ordered two of their "signature" cupcakes: a Christmas Good Guy and a Squiggle which cost me $3.75 each ($4.50 if you order online).

The Squiggle aka a Hostess-style cupcake is one of their best sellers and features chocolate cake filled with vanilla buttercream and covered in chocolate ganache icing with the white frosting "squiggle" on top.

While the size and moisture of the Squiggle were a-ok, it just wasn't chocolaty enough. I was expecting a rich, deep chocolate flavor from the combination of cake and ganache, and what I got was just a "meh" chocolate flavor; it was pretty disappointing in that respect. The filling tasted more like whipped cream than vanilla butter cream which is fine by me and faithful to the original Hostess Cupcake.

For size comparison purposes.

The Good Guy cupcake is so named because a portion of the proceeds from the sale of one goes to the SFK Organization. The Christmas version a vanilla cupcake with red and green sprinkles baked in (like a Pillsbury Funfetti cake) filled with vanilla buttercream frosting and topped with vanilla cream cheese frosting covered with rainbow sprinkles and a white chocolate drizzle.

The Good Guy was the better of the two for me, it was moister and had more vanilla flavor than the Squiggle did chocolate. Continuing the decided lack of flavor, I would not have known that the hardened drizzle on the cupcake was white chocolate if I hadn't read it off the Crumbs' website. The frosting could have used some extra vanilla as well.

Overall, I liked that that the cupcakes and frosting weren't overly sweet and that you get quite a large cupcake for the money, but felt that there needed to be a richer flavor to the cupcakes.

Crumbs Shop Locator