Susiecakes: Cheered Up!

(Awwww...)

It’s really hard for me to stay down for long because I have fantastic friends. When I stepped into the car on our way to our Friday-night-Dinner destination (take-out from Jasmine Market. Remember…I’m poor), what did I find on my seat? A big box of cupcakes from Susiecakes! I’ve been wanting to go to Susiecakes in forever (I’m even subscribed to their e-mail list) but it’s always closed when I’m in the Brentwood area.

I spent the most part of our drive to grab dinner making various “awwwwww-this-is-so-sweet” noises and feeling, quite literally, warm and fuzzy inside. Of course, the beautiful, sweet smell from the box also fuelled the warm and fuzzy feeling.

(Why friends rock: (left to right, from top) mint choco, strawberry, fluffy coconut, daily special, vanilla, red velvet)

The cupcakes are absolutely adorable. The pastel-colored frosting is slapped onto the cakes in a “grandma-made-these” way which reminded me of the cupcakes from Magnolia in NYC (I’ll FINALLY get to go in March!) I picked the red velvet cupcake for myself after plating the vanilla for Debs and the strawberry one for the Sun.

The red velvet cake was awesome. After the diabetes-inducing fiasco at Sweet Lady Jane not too long ago, it was comforting to know that red velvet cake and cream cheese frosting doesn’t have to taste like pure sugar. We took bites from each other’s cakes and, though I’m not usually blown away by strawberry flavored cakes, I’ve got to say, I was really impressed by Susiecake’s strawberry cupcake. As Sunny put it, it tasted almost like strawberry cheesecake.

(Coconut Goodness)

And knowing that I have an unhealthy fixation with all things coconut-related, Sunny grabbed the fluffy coconut cupcake at Susiecakes. I LOVED the frosting. Sweetened with desiccated coconut…there’s really no way you can go wrong with that. I’ve been spoilt by Ina Garten’s recipe for coconut cake/cupcakes (recipe will be up. I promise!) though and the actual cake part of Susiecake’s version wasn’t as coconutty as Ina’s. I think it’s because they didn’t use coconut milk in the batter. But then again, Ina’s version is TRANSCENDENT and it’s hard for anything to match up to her version.

My favorite of the batch would probably have to be the chocolate mint cupcake. Chocolate + mint is one of my all-time favorite sweets combos so I was already expecting good things from this cupcake. The chocolate cake was moist but not too heavy but it was the mint frosting that made me fall in love. I took a bite from the daily-special cupcake that Sunny had (We THINK it was cinnamon or something like that) and that was amazing too.

(The hands-down winner: Mint Chocolate)

Crumbs is still my all-time favorite cupcake place (whatever keeps the crumb so moist and dense must be illegal) but Susiecakes beats out all the other places in its sweetness balance. Nothing is too sweet or too much. And, plus, the sweetness behind the gesture is enough to bump it to the highest on my list :)

('Tastes-like Churro' Daily Special)

As if that weren't sweet enough already, she grabbed a menu for me, knowing that I'm a losery menu-collecter. Aw, I love those two.

FOOD: 4.5/5
SERVICE: n/a
ATMOSPHERE: n/a

SUSIECAKES
11708 San Vicente Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90049
(310) 442-2253
http://www.susiecakesla.com