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...