Love Thursday

I love chocolate cupcakes with white icing. It's a little scary how much I love them. But maybe you would understand why I love them so much if you grew up in Pittsburgh. And I swear the bakeries there have some secret that the rest of the world hasn't figured out and maybe that's because they understand the need for cupcakes in a city that is known for having 300+ rainy days a year. I know I needed something to balance out the environment I grew up in. Imagine being constantly surrounded with pale-overweight-gritty-steel-mill-working-obsessed Steeler-fans.

OK?!? A dose of sugary-sweetness was a necessity for survival!! And Pittsburgh bakeries understand that cause they make the moistest most chocolaty-scrumptious cupcakes with a perfect butter cream (not cloyingly sweet) icing that no other bakeries in the country can even try to compete with.

My friend Roz shares this obsession with me.
Once in high school we cut class to walk to the Bakery on Walnut Street and bought a chocolate cake (which is just a giant cupcake) with white icing. We ate the entire thing walking back to school. We have spent hours, and I do mean hours, talking about, researching, sampling and criticizing the different bakeries in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area. When we find one that comes close we immediately call the other with the name, location, rating and price of said cupcake so it can be critiqued.

We have found some 9s but no 10. Gotta go to Pittsburgh for that.



Here I am with the dozen cupcakes my friend Jay got me for my birthday last year. He ate one. I ate eleven. In three days.
(and they weren't even from Pittsburgh)