In honor of National Cupcake Day — which is Monday — Three Brothers Bakery is asking fans to vote for their favorite new specialty cupcake to add to the bakery's menu.
The choices are Margarita, Gingerbread, S'mores, Peanut Butter and Jelly, and Orange Dreamsicle.
From worst to first, here's our take based on a recent sampling. But you don't have to take our word for it. You can stop by Three Brothers Bakery through Monday to sample the options and cast a vote.
5. Orange Dreamsicle: "This takes like Pepto Bismol," one CultureMap staffer said after biting into it. I tend to agree. The frosting is way too sweet. It totally overwhelms the mild vanilla flavor of the cake.
4. Margarita: I was hoping this cupcake would have the sharp tang of good key lime pie, but instead the mild lime flavor mostly gets overwhelmed by sugary sweetness. It's another variation on the basic vanilla cupcake, so maybe that's the problem? Either way, not a winner.
Picking the bottom two was relatively easy, but it took us awhile to settle on the order for the Top 3. After some back and forth, we came to the following consensus.
3. PB&J: I was mostly outvoted here, because I liked the peanut butter flavor of the frosting. However, the rest of our judging panel thought the filling wasn't quite right, and that the flavors didn't mesh the way they would in an actual peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
2. Gingerbread: If it were closer to Christmas, this cupcake might have won. It tastes authentically like gingerbread with a good cinnamon flavor, although it lacks the spicy kick of other local bakeries.
1. S'mores: Maybe we were entranced by memories of summer night sitting around a campfire. Maybe the only chocolate cupcake in the group stood out. Either way, the marshmallow and graham cracker frosting really makes this cupcake.
After tasting all of the cupcakes, we concluded that, while they were all fairly tasty (except for dreamsicle), none of them quite match the fancy flavors at dedicated cupcake shops like Crave or Celebrity. However, Three Brothers still makes the best rye bread and hamentaschen in town.
If there's a contest before Purim to pick a new flavor of those, we're totally in.
If only the Margarita cupcake had a little more lime flavor, it might have been a contender.
