A brief break from ice cream: Cupcakes!

The other day, for some reason I got the craving for a cupcake. Maybe it was that I was having a rough day; maybe it's that I hadn't had a cupcake in quite a while. Whatever the reason (his heart or his shoes... anyone?), I wanted a cupcake. And when Crumbs tweeted about its cupcake of the week, the "Big Apple," I was sold.

A quick midafternoon walk to the nearest Crumbs, and I had my treat for the day. After dinner, I cracked it open, and this is what I saw:

Electric!

It's the traditional (enormous) Crumbs size. I took it out of the packaging and thumped it on a plate, then, as is customary, cut it in half. Behold, the chocolate buttercream filling inside the vanilla cake:

Kinda almost looks like a real apple. Kinda.

The cake itself is moist, verging on greasy, and tastes just like boxed cake mix. The vanilla buttercream is whipped and exceedingly light-textured, with a bit of a shortening mouthfeel. The chocolate buttercream filling is almost an afterthought, since the chocolate flavor is so incredibly retiring. The pretzel stem is a nice touch, but the surprising star of this whole concoction is the blanket of red crystal sugar coating the frosting. It lends sweetness and needed texture to the otherwise soft and mushy affair.

As always happens with Crumbs, even though I didn't eat the whole thing, I felt slightly sick afterwards. But it's a satisfying kind of sick, that sick that proves you just ate something totally bad for you but totally yummy, like fried dough. Suffice it to say that it cured my cupcake craving for the time being.

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