Review: Two Little Birds Bakery

Yesterday, I decided to go ahead and get cupcakes from the lone cupcakery that sells cupcakes at Farmer's Market on Thursday night.  It was a good addition to the amazing pizza I had at the Creeky Tiki (hawaiian with bacon, tomatos, and green onion) for the Bike Blowout (brought to you by the SLO Bike Coalition).   I got a vanilla/vanilla, a chocolate/chocolate, and a salted caramel.  I don't know if I have said this before, but I really like getting vanilla cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream, as it is about as basic as you can get, so you can really taste the cupcake for what it is.  So, lets get started.

First off, lets start with something positive.  I was very happy to find that this cake was very moist, and that the chocolate cake was not super sweet.  With this review I did get to share these with my friends, who some were not a fan of the super fluffy texture of the cake (they are more the pound cake types).  I personally like it, but maybe could have been a bit denser.  If you have to be more one than the other, I choose fluffy.

The chocolate cake I think was well done.  Some friends felt it wasn't sweet enough, but I think it was the perfect level of sweetness for a chocolate cake.  Too much sugar I feel covers flavors and other good ingredients you might have in your cake.  I typically feel this way both about cakes and frostings.

Now for the not so positive.  The biggest problem I had with these cupcakes was the frosting to cake ratio.  There was cake over flowing from the wrappers, with very little frosting.  You can see it from the picture I think, but I am a fan of the 1:3 ratio of frosting to cake.  These were more like 1:5, which just isn't enough frosting.

Speaking of frosting, I was NOT impressed with the caramel or the vanilla frosting on these cupcakes.  The vanilla in particular I thought was the worst thing about these, as they were so sweet I thought I was eating straight sugar.  My friends described the vanilla cupcake as something you would get from the grocery store, and I would agree.  NOT a fan of the taste.  The caramel by itself I thought was yummy, however when eating the salted caramel cupcake as a whole, it was hard to taste the caramel (which I think is related to the poor frosting ratio).  Could have used more salt too.  If I was to revamp this, I would take the straight caramel and make it a filling rather than a topping, and then add the caramel into a more tradition buttercream to top it.

Anyone who knows me knows I am not the biggest fan of chocolate frosting.  Its not that I don't like it, I just don't prefer it to a lighter frosting.  This chocolate frosting was good.  Very traditional.  Once again, would have been a very good cake if the frosting ratio was better.

My last complaint, which I find with several bakeries, and at the same time understand.  I do not like it when bakeries only use two types of cakes (usually chocolate and vanilla) and get different "flavors" by using different types of frosting.  Now I know Two Little Birds doesn't completely do this (I was bitter a girl in front of me bought the last champagne cupcake), but the salted caramel cupcake needed more, and that could have been achieved by adding something to that particular chocolate cake.

Overall rating would be a B-.  The chocolate cake and frosting were better than Cassie's, and the caramel by itself was tasty, but the vanilla cake and frosting, and the ratio of frosting to cake made me sad.