The Chicago Cupcake Crawl

Oh yes, we did! While Dan went record shopping, my college pal Lindsey and I spent Friday afternoon scouting Chicago's best cupcakeries.


As organized as ever, Lindsey mapped out the cupcake trial.


Spumoni and deep chocolate blueberry lavender flavors at "Cupcakes." We both loved the light creamy frosting but the cakes were a little dry. Spumoni was lovely. Blueberry was a little strange.


At Molly's Cupcakes, we sampled the strawberry shortcake and the Ron Bennington's--a delicious dense chocolate cupcake filled with peanut butter, topped with a chocolate ganache and butterscotch. Ron was my favorite in the crawl (I even picked one up for Dan) and I think Lindsey favored the strawberry shortcake.


At the Martha Stewart recommended Swirlz, we had the Banana Nutella and Malt Madness but were so over-sugared by that point that we barely finished them. I thought the banana was real nice.

While most Manhattan cupcake shops focus on creating old-time favorites (overly sweet standard what-your-grandma-used-to-make flavors), I noticed that the Chicago shops cared more about diversity, offering more flavors than I ever imagined.

The verdict: Molly's is tops in Chicago, though I know I still have a lot of experimenting to do in this town. There are more out there to try. We had to cut our tour short because we ran out of time. A great reason to come back (and of course, to catch up with Lindsey again which is always a real treat.)


I don't know what this means, but I like it.