Devil in the Details: Valentine's Cupcake Crawl

What is a Cupcake Crawl you ask? Well, it s a quest for the "best cupcake." Participants plan a route and go from bakery to bakery trying cupcakes back-to-back. Crawls can be based on neighborhoods, transportation options, favorite flavors, or if you're really enthusiastic, entire cities. (And they don’t come with the hangover risk of the more common Pub Crawl…)

In my case I needed to come up with a great Red Velvet recipe and I have tried many recipes and just could not quite get it. So, I came up with the idea that I had seen in the past and thought what a great day it would be to spend time with friends and enjoy one of my favorite desserts: A Red Velvet Cupcake Crawl…BRILLIANT!!

And we were off on our quest to find the best Red Velvet cupcake! It was a great day for a cupcake crawl the sun was out and there was excitement in the air. We had nothing but cupcakes on the brain and adventure waiting for us around every corner. We sampled cupcakes at about 6 bakeries in different parts of the city, took pictures and had plenty of laughs.

At the end of the day I must admit I had the worst sugar rush ever! Surprisingly, I was still lost on the taste every Red Velvet cupcake we tasted was different than the next...boy was I confused! My friends had their favorites but I was still looking for that right combination of chocolate and vanilla in flavor.

Back to the drawing board…!

The Legend

The exact history of red velvet cake is unknown. There is, however, a well known story of how the recipe came to be popularized. The legend claims a woman was staying at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. She loved the cake she had sampled there so much that she wrote to the hotel, asking for the baker’s name and a copy of the recipe. The recipe arrived in the mail alongside a rather large bill. The story explains that the woman was so furious, she copied the recipe and sent it to everyone she knew…