Batter Up: Cupcakes & Baseball!

Ah, two of my favorite things! I am lucky enough to live in very close proximity to Wrigley Field making it quite easy to watch a ball game. To be clear I am NOT a Cubs fan. Not even close, but I am a huge fan of the game so I will watch regardless of the teams.

On the way to Wrigley my friend Katie and I decided to stop for a cupcake at Phoebe's Cupcakes (chicagocupcakes.com). Not my first choice, but it was convenient. They had a decent selection to choose from so after a solid five minutes of back and forth I went with salted caramel and Katie chose Peanut Butter Fudgy Brownie.

Salted Caramel: Caramel soaked vanilla cake with caramel butter cream icing topped with sea salt. 1) the cake - awesome. It had an amazing texture and loved the flavor 2) the icing - so delicious. Just the right amount and it had a perfect hint of sea salt so that the cake overall was not too sweet which can easily happen with caramel 3)presentation - simple, fine. 4)creativity - not the first salted caramel i have seen, but the sea salt topping was a nice touch 5)overall happiness - unfortunately delighted. For personal reasons I really did not want to like these cupcakes, but of course they were delicious.

Peanut Butter Fudgy Brownie: I almost don't need to rate a cake with that title because you know it will be amazing. peanut butter. fudgy. brownie. duh. This was a brownie cheesecake topped with peanut butter italian buttercream. 1)the cake - the actual chocolate cake portion was not my favorite, but added with the cheesecake brought it back to amazingness. 2)PB icing - great! Some bakeries struggle with a peanut butter icing, but this one was alright in my book. It was very smooth and not overwhelming. 3) presentation - simple like the caramel - i like that. 4)creativity - pb chocolate is not that creative, but I have yet to see a cheesecake version. I think it was a nice touch 5) Overall happiness - hate to love it.

Well, Phoebe's gets an official thumbs up from me. If you are ever in boystown it is recommend. The flavor we are holding above is Spumoni which is a pistachio cake. This gets serious creative points, but I am not a fan of nuts so passed on this flavor.