Food, like everything else, has trends. Fro-yo bars, the South Beach Diet, Rachael Ray and, now, cupcakeries. True, boutique cupcake shops have been popular for roughly 10 years (you can thank Carrie Bradshaw and her frequent trips to Magnolia Bakery for starting yet another trend), but I thought their 15 minutes of fame would fizzle out long before word got round to Tuscaloosa. And then Gigi’s happened.
From the minute they opened their doors, lines have been queuing up to sample the pint-sized sweets. Two weeks later, crowds still haven’t eased up, so, naturally, I wanted to see what all of the hubbub was about.
I pulled up to the store around 7 o’clock and was not surprised to find a throng of hungry people. It’s a good thing I called my order in the day before. By the time I got in the store about half of the daily specials were sold out.
Patiently waiting, the line zigzagged its way to the store’s one cashier as I began to get more and more claustrophobic. After thirty minutes, when it was finally my turn to order, it hit me: Gigi, you are one sneaky lady. Make people wait in lines long enough and by the time they get to the register they’ll want their money’s worth…I bought five.
I asked for the four most popular cupcakes when I called in, which turned out to be Scarlett’s Red Velvet, Midnight Magic, Cookies-n-Cream and Wedding Cake. And after staring down the Boston Cream Pie for half an hour I decided to get that one too.
The colossal cupcakes were nestled into carry out boxes (there’s no room to stand, let alone sit in Gigi’s) and I merrily made my way back home, perhaps too merrily, because when I open the box I noticed that Scarlett’s Red Velvet had gotten a little too friendly with Wedding Cake and the icings had smushed together into a pile.
As I was scooping the icing back on to their respective cakes I realized just how much icing there was. Of the Midnight Magic cupcake’s four-inch height, two and three-fourths of it consisted of icing. I attempted to take a bite and got what felt like two and three-fourth inches of icing up my nose. Once able to breathe properly, the taste of the cake began to register: chocolate. And that’s about it. No surprises, nothing particularly special, just chocolate cake with chocolate icing sprinkled with chocolate chips. Two bites and I was bored.
On to the next cake! Going to the opposite end of the spectrum, I went with the Wedding Cake next. It has white cake with white icing and – you guessed it! – white sprinkles. The pillowy cupcakes were dreamy to look at, but it didn’t make for much interest in the taste department. The cake was moist, and the icing was fluffy, but Pillsbury can do that. And to be honest I couldn’t really tell you much difference between the two.
The Red Velvet Cake had gotten a lot of hype from the lady on the phone when I was ordering, so I had high hopes for this one. Those high hopes were quickly brought back to earth as the flavors of red dye #40 filled my mouth. The food coloring taste was only slightly masked by the ten pounds of cream cheese frosting plopped on top. There was so much of it that I was forced to take the bread and butter approach and spread reasonably portioned amounts of frosting onto sections of rather dry cake.
At this point I was on my fourth cupcake and was beginning to get a better idea of what Adam Richman from “Man vs. Food” must feel like. The Boston Cream Pie had a thin, and much less intimidating, ganache icing. While there was barely any “cream” in the middle, the simple and rich flavors of the dark chocolate ganache and yellow cake easily made it my favorite.
The Cookies-N-Cream cupcake finished in a close second. It was the only cupcake that did not taste exactly like what I expected. But after trying five of Gigi’s best, I was nearing sugar coma, and the most I could process was “mmm.”
Call me tough, but if I’m paying $3 for a cupcake it better be a darn good cupcake. And once I eventually recover from my comatose state, I think I’ll be sticking with the store brand.
