Price: $3.50/cupcake or $2.50/mini cupcake or $39/dozen
Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
After posting my Georgetown Cupcake Review I felt the need to continue to share fabulous cupcakeries! And I decided to bring it back home to Texas :) And maybe continue my bias in posting cupcakery reviews of places where I got to take pictures with my Nikon D5100 AND pictures of the cupcakes in daytime light. Does that make me a food photo snob? Can you even be one when you are not even that great ;) Do not judge me ;)
Okay- well if you remember one of my cousins from California, the same cousin I went to Mardi Gras with last year, came to Houston to experience the awesomeness that is the Houston Rodeo and Livestock Show. Now, I can only imagine that those of you not from Texas are probably doing what I did when I first heard about the rodeo-- which is chuckle while simultaneously rolling your eyes! BUT it was actually way more fun then I ever dreamed! Actually it was one of the first dates I had with the hubby. And you know what?! My cousin thought it was amazing too! My cousin also came to Texas because I have another cousin who lives in Houston (sadly she only moved to Houston after I moved to College Station :/ -- well it was her birthday AND she is preggers! I love babies!
My cousin from California is the one that introduced to me to the art of food crawling and so I wanted to take her on a Houston Cupcake Crawl. Well I took her to Crave Cupcakes (duh!)--since they are like my favorite cupcakery in Houston (or so I thought!). But then I wanted to go to some other places-- most of which I have gone to before but one of which I have never been to called Celebrity Cupcakes. Celebrity Cupcakes is located in the same area as Crave Cupcakes-- the Rice Village Area of Houston. Its off the "beaten path" in a quaint little corner of rice village and they are quite easy to miss but do take the minute to stop by! Though, since it is small-- they do not have any indoor city and have very limited outdoor seating :/ My cousin who lives in Houston had been there before and shared that she thought the staff was a sort of mean, which I hate and so I was a bit nervous. We were pleasantly surprised that the girl who was there that day was super friendly and super nice about me taking pictures for my blog. She kindly explained the different cupcakes, sizes and Celebrity favorites!
We decided to get four different flavors: Red Velvet, Chocolate Truffle, Vanilla Bean and S'mores. We got all regular size cupcakes except for S'mores because they ran out of the regular size and so we decided to get the mini. Okay- so when reading this review you need to know that my cousin from Cali was not as in love with this place as I was. I think she preferred Crave--so take that into consideration. The first thing you will notice about these cupcakes are they are absolutely beautiful! They really take the time to decorate their cupcakes to the T with just perfect color combinations. Then when biting into these cupcakes I though they were moist and fluffy. I do have to say, not the moistest ever (I think that victory would have to go BCS Chocolate Gallery or More Cupcakes) but still very moist. My cousin disagreed and though they really were not moist enough. I loved the amount of frosting they had on their cupcakes.
Usually I veer on the side of less frosting than more BUT their frosting tasted fantastic- so I did not mind that they chose to veer on the side of more than less. What I truly loved about them- was that this was not always the case though. I think they have a wonderful skill of knowing which cupcakes would be matched great with more frosting and which cupcakes would be better with a little bit of reserve on how much frosting they used, such as the Vanilla Bean Cupcake that I tried. The overall taste of each cupcake, I loved-- ALL of them! The S'more did not taste exactly like S'more and probably needed more graham cracker BUT I have made S'more desserts before myself and know how hard it is to master that taste even if you put a ton of graham cracker. Marshmallows and chocolate just mask that flavor very easily. The Red Velvet was really yummy not my ultimate favorite (as that win goes to Georgetown Cupcakes) but very good! You just cannot go wrong with truffle- I loved it! But my super favorite, and this is weird for me to say--was vanilla bean and this is coming from a chocoholic!
I must be reminiscing a lot to my childhood but this cupcake reminded me of a fun lunch/snack my mom would make me. She would make this really simple "sandwich"- she would spread butter on two pieces of bread (not toasted) and then sprinkle each side with sugar and put the pieces together- voila you had this wonderful dessert sandwich that I just fell in love with when I was a little kid. The vanilla bean cupcake brought me back to that very feeling of love :) It just tasted so good and so homemade, you know!? My cousin was not as big of a fan as I was but I really loved this cupcake and how homey it was.
They offer both filled and non-filled cupcakes that rotate on a daily basis. You can check out their website for the menu of daily flavors. They do offer seasonal flavors- such as S'mores which becomes daily for a temporary basis. My only criticisms are few: their box is too simple: a white box with a Celebrity Sticker-- for how fancy and quaint this place was- they really need to "up" their look (the box that I show- is topped with a t-shirt and tied with a ribbon- but that is NOT how they present their box, just the bottom-- white box w/sticker), their cupcakes were small (not super small but on the smaller side, although they tasted better than Crave Cupcakes, I get about twice the amount of cupcake there for something that tastes almost as good), and finally, although I really loved this place-- I did have other people who tried Celebrity as well and I wanted to take into account their impressions (which weren't as positive as mine).
Bottom line: if you live in Houston, nearby or are just visiting- stop by! You can make it a double whammy- swing by Crave Cupcakes and the swing by Celebrity! You will not be sad! In fact just the opposite- you will be very happy you decided to try both! Yummy in your tummy!
Enjoy,
Chika
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