Cupcake

3338 University Ave SE
Minneapolis, MN 55414
612-378-4818
http://www.cup-cake.com/

Category: Cafe

Rating (Scale 1-10, with 10 being the highest):
Food: 7
Service: N/A (counter service)
Ambience: 7

Recommendation: Very Good. As the name suggests, this café unleashes a list of delightful cupcakes too long to count (or list in this write-up).

We’re always on the prowl for a nice café – a place to go in the morning to read the paper (or write a blog) and not feel that you’ll be rushed or bothered. We do our part in supporting these local establishments and sincerely hope that they can sustain themselves with the help of their regulars. We ended up at Cupcake, in search of coffee and something sweet, after the St. Paul Winter Carnival last week. The crowd here is diverse – whether it’s a student writing a report, friends catching up on gossip, or someone enjoying the paper or their favorite novel. The décor is whimsical, from the chalkboard menus and local art to the shelves of curios for sale (which include baby’s clothes).

The menu consists of many breakfast and lunch foods including sandwiches, salads, soups, quiches and breads…oh, we forgot to mention cupcakes. On any given day, you can expect to find about 20 varieties of cupcakes all of which are made on the premises. At the counter, your eyes drift to the different colors of cupcakes, all lined up in unison behind the glass case, and the bevy of colors that bombard your brain. How do we decide - will it be the Black Bottom, the Pumpkin, the Turtle Cake or maybe the Triple Vanilla Cream. Oh, give up – “we’ll take one of each, please” and a Caramel Latte to go with it. The artsy barista took painstakingly long to prepare the coffee and we were getting impatient standing at the counter. But when I took a sip of the coffee, it was all worth it – this was without a doubt one of the best coffees I have ever had (I can’t exactly pinpoint what made it awesome, but my taste buds can attest). Our favorite cupcakes were the Black Bottoms and the Turtle Cake, the former contained cream cheese and chocolate chips and the latter was a much richer, fudgy, cake-style cupcake. The Pumpkin cupcake was nice as well, especially with the sweet cream frosting. We didn’t really care for the Triple Vanilla as it just didn’t have a distinct flavor. We’ll be back soon to try some of the other offerings…and we’re looking forward to sitting on their outdoor patio in the summer.

$. The Cupcakes are less than $3 and the coffees are reasonably priced.