Marketing
Like other cupcakeries reviewed here on the blog, especially Kara's and Crumbs, Sprinkles has an extremely good brand. It's clean, clear, and fun. They do things right, like providing a "flavor card" (itself a clever, fun name for the boring word "menu") in PDF on their web site (here's the link for your convenience), using iconic symbols where possible (like the dots used on the top of each cupcake), and keeping their packaging clean, clear, and attractive with darling little
cupcake-sized boxes. Their website is excellent, filled with all the right kinds of cool-looking photos, and also taking the time to do what I haven't seen any other cupcakery do: provide a whole page of info about each flavor. Wonderful! So right off the bat I loved their marketing, but equally off the bat, I wondered if Sprinkles would be too big for its well-branded britches.How the cupcakes fared
We tried the chocolate marshmallow and the lemon. The chocolate marshmallow was sumptous belgian dark cake filled with marshmallow cream, topped with bittersweet chocolate ganache. Delicious and rich. Not a single complaint, even about the marshmallow filling, which I find can be tricky-- you don't want to make it too sticky or too soft. The consistency of this was just right, though.
The lemon was lemon cake with lemon-vanilla frosting. It sounds much plainer than the chocolate marshmallow but this was hands-down the best cupcake I've ever had. It was so so so good. The frosting melted in my mouth. Just so wonderful. Not too tart and not too sweet. However, it was also incredibly rich. I had to down a glass of water afterwards. This is not necessarily a bad thing, except perhaps for Sprinkles, because I wouldn't want to buy a dozen of lemon cupcakes (although I'd be tempted to) unless for a party because they'd be too rich. On the other hand, having a dozen lemon cupcakes might mean that I could spend several days floating in a lemon-scented sugar bliss.So, Sprinkles was a winner in my book.
Sprinkles website
