Apartment613

All photos courtesy Ryan Davies

Post by resident cupcake expert Sabrina Bowman

Although other cities have already moved on to macarons and whoopee pies, Ottawa has just recently hopped on the cupcake train (though we already have our own cupcake video).  The cupcake trend has exploded in Ottawa, with three new cupcakeries opening over the past year.  And why not?  What’s not to like about moist, flavourful, delicate cake crowned with a royal swirl of sweet frosting?

In order to help our readers navigate the increasingly crowded sea of cupcake providers in Ottawa, Apartment613 spent two hot nights consuming many soft, sweet pillows of awesomeness from six local bakers.  We tasted until the room spun and our bodies buzzed with glucose, until questions like “is anyone else having trouble seeing?” echoed in the summer evening.  We sacrificed for you, dear readers.

In all, we sampled from five cupcake shops with storefront locations – The Flour Shoppe, Isobel’s Cupcakes and Cookies, Thimblecakes, Cupcake Lounge, and Glitz Cupcakes and Company.  We also included Auntie Loo’s, because although it’s a vegan bakery and not a cupcakery, it’s extremely well-known for its cupcakes. As for our method, we purchased two chocolate, two vanilla, and two special-flavoured cupcakes from each, and we graded them out of five in five categories: scent, visual appeal, the taste of the cake, the taste of the icing, and how everything fit together. It was a blind taste test, so we didn’t know whose cupcake we were assessing. And we didn’t sample from online-only cupcakeries (many of whom provide wonderful products!), but we hope to consider evaluating these outlets once our temporary diabetes disappears.

So although we’d normally indulge happily in a tasty treat from any of these shops, we put on our tough critic hats and made some difficult –and sometimes bittersweet – proclamations about Ottawa’s cupcake scene. With fingers licked clean, and sugar hangovers dispersed, here are our results of our first ever Cupcake Challenge.