Millions of Sprinkles. Sprinkles for you and Sprinkles for me.

Last weekend, Jen was at Disneyland celebrating her good friend's, Liz McMunn, bachelorettehood. While she was in vast land of the angels, Jen picked up an Oprah favorite as a treat for the house. Featured on such shows as The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, and The Tyra Banks Show and in print such as Bon Appétit, The New York Times, Sunset Magazine, and New York Magazine, I'm talking about a half-dozen cupcakes from Sprinkles Cupcakes. The self-proclaimed original cupcake bakery has revolutionized the pastry world by building a name for itself through miniature albeit full flavored cupcakes.

At $3.50 each, they weren't cheap, but Jen saw people leaving with the yummy treats by the dozen. San Francisco's Citizen Cupcake is our local equivalent though they some how manage to charge $4.50 a cupcake, making Sprinkles look like a bargain. Costs aside what matters most is the tastes. The cupcakes are baked daily from scratch. And despite their expansive list of flavors only a handful are served each day. Jen brought home a half dozen of which I tasted 4 flavors: fragrant lemon cake with lemon-vanilla frosting with zest, Belgian dark chocolate cake with rich mocha frosting, southern style light chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting, and Madagascar bourbon vanilla cake with coconut cream cheese frosting. The lemon had great flavor but was a bit could use more of it. The looks of the red velvet was certainly most interesting with a color of red beans found in Vietnamese dessert drinks. Its flavor was most forgettable though. The mocha cupcake was by far Jen's favorite with rich coffee flavor in the frosting atop deep chocolaty cake. Coconut would have been probably just as good with its great frosting flavor but being a few days old the cake hand dried out significantly. (Yes, we somehow had cupcakes sitting in our house for more than a few days. Go figure.)

All in all, Sprinkles does deserve praise for an innovative business concept and pretty good execution but maybe not all of what people are clamoring about. At $40 for a dozen cupcakes, that's bordering on highway robbery to me. Then again, if Oprah's endorsing you, I guess you can charge anything you damn well please.

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Culinary World of the Day: Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla
Made from beans grown on the island of Madagascar, Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla is the king of vanillas. Its creamy, sweet flavor blends beautifully with a variety of foods. Source Nielsen-Massey Vanillas