Our First Review! The Painted Cupcake-Toya

No lie, I was sitting at my desk one morning and I asked God to bless me with some joy for the day. Not even ten minutes later, this little bundle of joy from The Painted Cupcake pops up in my office...

The Lord works in mysterious and delicious ways.

A few weeks later I was able to get four more of these super cute cupcakes and share them with some friends who were having me over for a dinner date.

No wonder they are so cute; the owner Tracey Davenport is an artist turned baker who craftily designs a wide variety of cupcakes. (From the top left, Strawberry Fields, The Traditional,  Coconut Standoff &The Bugsy carrot cake). My dinner guests were all too willing to help me with my cupcake "research" as we split the four cupcakes between the four of us. The winning cupcake of the night? The Bugsy carrot cake, hands down. It was moist and not too spicy which for me was a plus. I find that some carrot cupcakes make the mistake of being borderline carrot cake muffins with just too many raisins, pineapples, etc. Carrot cake has NEVER been my flavor of choice but this had great flavor with just the right amount of cream cheese frosting and I'd get it again. The Coconut Standoff coconut cupcake came in second and was also delicious.  I think I stole someone's piece just to umm... "gain more clarity" on my decision.The Strawberry Fields strawberry cupcake was the most aesthetically pleasing to me but then again I am partial to the color pink. It was delicious and had a yummy strawberry center with a very creamy strawberry icing. With my personal favorite type of cupcake being a vanilla cake with vanilla icing, I was a little disappointed that The Traditional  cupcake came in fourth place. We debated whether the Coconut Standoff cupcake was the same cake as The Traditional cupcake and I said it wasn't (according to their website, I was correct). I wasn't crazy about the texture of the cake or the icing, which was somewhat grainy in texture and seemed to be not much more than powdered sugar.

Overall though, I thought the cupcakes were rather good and I look forward to visiting the shop to taste more flavors.  If I worked in downtown Nashville by the Arcade where they are located I would be in a lot of trouble. The Painted Cupcake is open on Tues-Thurs 9-4, Fri 9-5, Sat 10-5. Be sure to stop by and tell them that The Cupcake Gangstas sent you.

Allow Me To Introduce Myself

Hello everyone,
I'm Raffeal Sears, an actor from Kansas City, Mo., now residing in "The Concrete Jungle." I'm here to say that yes, I'm a Cupcakeaholic. Hmmm...let's just call myself a Cupcake Gangsta! Yeah, that sounds better. Can't be having it sound like I have a problem or something. I'm sure everybody struggles to keep walking when they stumble upon a bakery. LOL!

I never knew that I was having a "Love Supreme" with cupcakes. One day I just realized, after my 4th cupcake in a week, that I really, really love these things. I often find myself talking passionately about these small delights with people, especially my fellow cupcake heads: my bro, Larry, (also known as LARS) and my good friend, Toya. We would constantly exchange dialogue about what makes a cupcake live up to it's name.

Toya and I decided to start this here blog after reading each others' Facebook and Twitter statuses. Most of the time, it was about cupcakes. You would think we were talking about an actual person. We thought it would be best if we were able to share our favorite cupcake spots to the world. We want to keep you safe from the Suckah MCs that seek to destroy your tastebuds with their cardboards that they call cupcakes :) We are your Cupcake Superheros fighting off the wackness one bite at a time. You can thank us later!
Peace,
Ra

Location:Brooklyn, NY

My Name is Toya and I am a Cupcake Gangsta.

You know you love cupcakes when small children see cupcakes and say your name because they associate them with you. This happened last year when my friend's then 2 year old son was in Whole Foods and saw cupcakes. "I promise, we saw cupcakes and he pointed to them saying 'Towa, Towa' " she told me. I mean,that's gangsta...if you don't really know what gangsta is (I've never been quite sure myself but whatever).

My name is Toya (or Towa to a particular toddler). I live in Nashville and well, I am pretty fanatical about cupcakes. So is Raffeal who is the other author of this blog. Raffeal, who is in New York City, and I have gone back and forth on Twitter at times discussing our latest cupcake finds. One day he suggested we start a blog reviewing our favorite cupcake spots and I thought it was an awesome idea.

Doing research for this blog has not been difficult as you can well imagine. In fact, I can probably pull back as I already have a good amount of experience in this town to pull from. So at least once a week Raf and I will have reviews of our favorite places to indulge in cupcake bliss. Hey and if you know of any places we should try, please feel free to email us at cupcakesarenotagame@gmail.com. Here are some random facts about me in regards to cupcakes:

1.I worked in my parents' bakery for close to ten years and did not care a bit about cupcakes. My mom made these yeast rolls that pretty much blinded me to everything else. When I left home and moved away, frosting made me nostalgic and I fell in love with cake. What I love about cupcakes is that you can have one nice little round and complete treat and it's over. A slice of cake is open ended in my book.

2. I prejudge every bakery by how good they make my favorite cupcake which is a plain vanilla cake with vanilla frosting (The Cupcake Collection's Wedding Cake cupcake is my favorite hands down). If you can make something so simple good, chances are you know what you're doing. However, if you screw something so simple up you get a *side eye* from me immediately.

3. You can never EVER have too many sprinkles. EVER.

4. I had a dessert birthday party this year where all attendees brought desserts. Most people know I love cupcakes so there were about a million. It was an awesome idea for about 45 minutes but then I started begging people that were on their way to bring potato chips. Way too much sugar but oh so much fun.

5. I am giving Whole Foods one year from today for them to step up their cupcake skills because... uh uh. Everything else they make is awesome so I really don't get why their cupcakes are subpar. Their cupcakes are gorgeous but deceiving and one thing I detest is a bad cupcake in disguise. You know why? Because cupcakes are NOT a game!

This is going to be so much fun...