way more than cheesesteak

● ● ●

Saturday, August 28, 2010 @ 8:01 PM

THE PHILLY CUPCAKE TRUCK!!! (finally!)

Just as I was about to move to Pennsylvania from Connecticut, I heard about the New Haven cupcake truck. It offers several decadent flavors, such as salted caramel and hummingbird (pineapple and banana), as well as a variety of toppings like standard sprinkles or edible gold flakes, if you're feeling fancy. They even offer shots of frosting if you'd rather skip the cake altogether (that's my kind of truck!). I was pretty bummed that I didn't have time to check it out before I moved, but after a quick Google search, I realized that Philly had its own cupcake truck, Buttercream.

I'm ashamed to admit that despite my excitement, it took me a year to finally stalk out the cupcake truck. I came close to visiting a few times, but for one reason or another it never happened. A few days ago I took a look at my "Things to do in Philly this summer" list and realized that I only had a few weeks left. So, I made myself a hair appointment at the Aveda Institute (on my list), found out where the truck was parked and was off!

I headed over to Clark Park in University City. I was greeted by an array of vibrant vegetables, jars of jams and jellies and beautiful bouquets of wildflowers at the farmers market that was going on.

I quickly brushed by the stands, on a mission for one thing and one thing only: cupcakes. I had the white van in sight and nothing could deter me from the allure of bright colored sprinkles and the promise of year-anticipated cupcakes.

At $2 a pop, flavors were selling out fast (the truck had only been parked for an hour before they ran out of ganache!), so I settled on two flavors: banana with nutella buttercream and chocolate with peanut butter buttercream.

Let's start with the chocolate cupcake. As you can tell from the photo above, there wasn't much frosting for such a big cupcake. I was worried that the peanut butter frosting wouldn't have a strong flavor and that it would be lost amidst all that chocolate.

The peanut butter flavor was perfect. The buttercream was silky and light. It's no wonder why the Cupcake Lady chose Buttercream as the name of her operation. It was so smooth and perfectly blended... I was surprised at how beautiful the texture was. As for the chocolate cake, it was moist and soft, but a little messy. If it had been a little more moist or maybe a tad denser, it might have stayed together better.

Let's move onto banana.

Banana can be tricky. Too little and it lacks flavor and can be dry and crumby. Too much and the cake will be flavorful but dense or worse--undercooked. This little guy was denser than the average vanilla cupcake, but was too light to be confused with banana bread or even a banana muffin. It had just enough banana and the perfect amount of buttercream. The nutella was delicious on its own (I sneaked a lick), but, despite the amount of it, the hazelnut flavor was so subtle that it played second fiddle to the banana flavor of the cupcake.

I had such a lovely time hanging out in Clark Park today; the sky was brilliantly blue and cloudless and everyone was enjoying cupcakes and the farmers market in the lovely weather. Tracking down the cupcake truck forced me to take a detour from my normal weekend routine--I got to relax and poke around the city by myself at my own pace. I wish I had found the cupcake truck sooner!

Labels: banana, chocolate, cupcakes, nutella, peanut butter

0 Comments: