Hello Cupcake opened last week to much fanfare, adding to the small, but growing, selection of cupcakes here in DC. I suppose DC is taking its cue from NYC and LA, where there are full fledged cupcake wars (see, for example, this intriguing article). I finally got to try Hello Cupcake today - a little treat to myself to take my mind off of the pain in the center of my back, the result of a mole removal and four stitches.
Back to the cupcakes - with the hype this was getting around the internet, I was expecting nothing short of a Magnolia cupcake. OK, that's really all I have to compare it to as far as the specialty-cupcake-bakery-universe goes. I'm going to have to give Hello an A-. For a $3 cupcake, it's a bit on the small side - about the size of what you'd make at home. If memory serves, a Magnolia cupcake is closer to $2 (maybe $2.50 - or it could have gone up by now, it's been a few years), and is close to twice the size. Hello wins with its icing though. Whereas Magnolia uses, exclusively I believe, a rich buttercream icing - which is delicious, don't get me wrong - Hello uses a variety of icings. The cupcake I sampled was the You Tart flavor - lemon cake with lemon cream cheese frosting. The cake was nice and moist, with a hint of lemon flavor that seemed to get stronger as you ate it. The icing, while there was a lot of it, was nice and light, and not overly sweet. Some other flavors use a buttercream base, or ganache, or peanut butter.
Final verdict - I will definitely return to sample other flavors. Just as soon as I resume my gym routine and can work these suckers off...
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