The Vault - Georgetown Cupcake

Photo courtesy of Georgetown Cupcake

I still remember the day I first lined up for a cupcake.  A $2.75 cupcake, to be exact.  Even now, I know it's indulgent, both in terms of calories gained and money spent (in high school, $2.75 was what I spent on my school lunch).  But there I was, with some of my co-workers, standing patiently in line alongside prepped-out college kids waiting to get their own prized pink boxes of cupcakes from the now-famous Georgetown Cupcake (see them in action on their show DC Cupcakes on TLC http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/tv/dc-cupcakes).  

When I finally made it inside their tiny (original) store, I thought to myself: "Okay, you have a very cute shop and a smart concept, but seriously, it's just a cupcake people."  But then I took my first bite of the Chocolate Ganache cupcake (winner of the 2008 Washington Post Food Section's "Cupcake Wars") and I was instantly caught between the urge to smack myself for being so naive, and surrendering completely to my ascension to nirvana.  Yes, people, it really was/is THAT good.  And that was before I even tried their Red Velvet Cake, which is my favorite among favorites, and has ruined me for all other red velvet cakes.   Moist yet light, dense yet fluffy, and with just the right amount of the most perfect cream cheese frosting: airy yet satisfying, and not overly sweet.  I could try to wax poetic about it all day, but the bottom line is these are Death Row meal-caliber cupcakes, and one should not wait til then to give them a try.  

And as if their coveted cupcakes weren't enough, the sisters who own the business are often sweating it out in the kitchen with their staff (in a packed store, I once had a five-minute conversation with Katherine about some difficulty I was having replicating their Chocolate Ganache frosting recipe, which had been published as part of the Cupcake Wars feature), and have spread their good fortune throughout the community (among their outreach efforts was Operation Cupcake, pictured below).  But be forewarned: what used to be a local institution is now a national destination for visitors to the nation's capital, so if you're not utilizing their mail-order service to the lower 48 states, avoid the massive, hours-long line at the DC location by pre-ordering the cupcakes online so you can skip the line and head straight to the counter for pick-up.  And if that wasn't sweet enough, Georgetown Cupcake now has a location in New York City's Soho District and will open a Boston branch this spring.  Now if only they'd launch one of their own cupcake ATMs here in Australia... ;-(

http://www.georgetowncupcake.com/index.html

SCORE!

Forget the little blue box from that jeweler; it's these pink boxes that are the prize.

My favorite assortment: Chocolate Cubed, Red Velvet, and Chocolate Ganache <3

And now for the official portraits :)

OPERATION CUPCAKE--perhaps the world's most heavily armed cupcakes ;-)

3 dozen of the 10,000 cupcakes Georgetown Cupcake sent to Iraq and Afghanistan