The Cold Stones of Cupcake Shops

So you know at Cold Stones Creamery, the ice cream chain, where you get to pick your ice cream flavor and toppings?... Well someone has crossed this use of free will over to a whole new realm of awesome. Meet Cupcakes Cupcakes, a San Diego based cupcakery that ships their cupcakes to a little shop at the Glendale Galleria, where my sister spotted it on our preliminary holiday shopping trip. We had just spent a half hour in the Forever 21 Accessory store, which, incidentally, is a great way to work up an appetite, when we saw it.

The set up was adorable! Like a 1950's ice cream parlor decorated in pink, white, and black with pocka dots. A lot like my blog, in fact! You pick your cake type from either red velvet, chocolate, vanilla, key lime or cherry. Then you pick your icing from buttercream, cream cheese, chocolate or lime. Finally you pick your toppings from a rather wide variety: cute daisy sugar candies, rainbow sprinkles, pink sugar, oreos, M&Ms, gummy bears, or chocolate chips. YUM!

My sister and I went with two mini cupcakes, both chocolate cake (as they were sold out of their infamous red velvet) and one with buttercream icing, one with chocolate icing. And the toppings? Oreos (of course!) on the buttercream and pink sugar on the chocolate icing. At $2.25 a piece, these minis really hit the spot. Despite the fact that the cake is not made fresh every day as it is shipped from San Diego about every 2-3 days, the cake was surprisingly moist and rich. The chocolate icing was the closest I've had to my mom's-quality icing (though as always, falling short!) but the buttercream was blasé - it had the familiar crisco taste that I recognize from my own icing experiments. Overall though, it was a great mid-shopping snack!

We enjoyed them on the adorable pink cushioned stools set at a counter that overlooked the mall. The staff was friendly and eager to tell us about their business. Though the cupcakes were just average, the ambiance was excellent. I would definitely visit this place again just for the cute decor and cupcake paraphernalia on sale from t-shirts to charms!