Cupcakes & Smiles

So I’ve been looking for the perfect cupcake. Everywhere I go I eat cupcakes. I love a good cupcake. I didn’t find that here. Hubby and I stopped just before lunch on a Saturday morning. The storefront is very small. The cupcakes were fresh as was evident by the girl behind the counter filling the display case when we arrived. They had about ten choices none of which were over the top interesting but we decided on the Peanut Butter Cup and the Raspberry Explosion. My raspberry cupcake was dry. And the frosting was so overly sweet as was the raspberry filling that I couldn’t finish it and threw the rest in the trash. Hubby’s peanut butter cupcake was dry and he made the comment that if he hadn’t known what flavor it was he wouldn’t have been able to tell by tasting it. It was that bland. We won’t be going back which is probably a good thing because I offended the girl by mentioning a certain TV show where all they do is make cupcakes in competition. She said she hated the show. I can see why — they can’t compete. The search for the perfect cupcake continues.

Being a lover of bakery goods, it pains me to give this place a bad review. I visited my family earlier this year for my dad’s birthday, and my mom ordered cupcakes from here for his birthday celebration. The cupcakes weren’t that great — they were dry and on the small side. I could have made better, MUCH moister cupcakes with some Betty Crocker mix from Wegman’s and saved my mom some $. (Living in southern California, I guess I’m spoiled from cupcake places here like Sprinkles Cupcakes.)

While the cupcakery craze is relatively new, this shop has been doing business at their Camillus, NY location for around 5 years. They do orders for events (weddings, parties, etc.), or you can just stop in and take a delicious-​looking gourmet cupcake to go. I did the latter.
The service was great… the staff was very friendly and helpful. The store is small (at least the customer area) and there are two tables, but I don’t think it is set up for sit-​in customers. Rather, the tables might be for sitting and looking through the books to place orders. Oddly, there is a shelf of beauty products that you could test and buy. That seemed a weird contrast to the cupcakes for me.
The cupcakes tasted fresh and they were good… but, the flavor I had didn’t «wow» me. The buttercream frosting didn’t really have a strong flavor to it (I think it should have been vanilla), and the cake was a bit on the dense side (I LOVE light, fluffy cupcakes… just my preference). If you are looking to order for an event, I’d say that the taste is as good as any grocery store bakery cupcake, but the selection of flavors is far better.