Batson's Blog

A large part of my 2013 was going to 42 different cupcake shops in the greater Charlotte area, sampling over 60 different cupcakes and somehow preventing a sugar overload. The result of all of that (besides a lot of exercise ahead for 2014) is an end to my search for Charlotte's best cupcake. Actually, I got more than I bargained for. 9 different cupcake shops had cupcakes that I gave over 4-and-a-half cupcake star ratings to. Cupcake Delerium’s Aunt Jemima cupcake (complete with bacon on top) was incredible! Big View Diner’s amazingly delicious chocolate cupcake is any chocolate lover’s dream come true. Cupcrazed has a lot of amazing cupcakes, but I enjoyed the maple bacon quite a bit. Maddy’s Fatty’s cannoli cupcake brings a bit of New York City into the Queen City. And then there’s The Polka Dot Bake Shop’s red velvet cupcake (pictured on the right), the cupcake that got my 2013 cupcake obsession going. Of all the cupcakes I sampled, I think Granny Mac's...

Thousands of people were in Concord for the Bank of America 500 this weekend. I made a stop, just south of the Speedway, at Granny Mac's Bake Shop . I wasn't really sure what to expect going there. Had I checked out their website, I probably would've had a better idea. Once you walk in, there are donuts, cookies and other goodies to the right. The cupcakes are to the left. I started walking to the display case and quickly noticed that these cupcakes are huge! They’re Perkins Mammoth Muffins huge or Sam’s Club huge. One thing's for sure: you don't need too many of these cupcakes to make a hearty dessert. Strawberry Cupcake This cupcake was potent! I could smell it in my car on the way home even though the cupcake was securely packed into a plastic bakery box. There's a nice strawberry flavor to it. In searching for awesome cupcakes this year, I've realized that some strawberry cupcakes have a really strong strawberry flavor (almost to t...

Finally! This week I snagged myself a FuManChu cupcake. Unlike some other cupcakes in Charlotte, there are some very original flavors at FuManChu -- several of which include alcohol. It's a business started up by a man in Charlotte. His website says he's trying to open up shop someplace. I stumbled upon the site last year, when it said a shop would be opening in December. Plans fell through apparently because the shop is still in the works. That means the only way to get a FuManChu cupcake is to pick it up from one of the bars that sells them. Each Tuesday and Thursday they are available at a bar or restaurant in NoDa, on North Davidson Street. I tried to pick one up a couple of month's ago, but the bar they were being sold at was closed because there was some kind of small group theatre production happening. I tried the following Thursday, but Mr. FuManChu was sick, so there were no cupcakes available that day. Needless to say, I was happy to see a tweet...

For some reason I’m just finding out about Gigi’s Cupcakes . I Googled “Charlotte Cupcakes” several months ago when I started writing these reviews and I missed Gigi’s. It’s located in the Sharon Corners Shopping Center , but it doesn’t stick out, even if you’re looking for it. The shop is tucked way back in the corner, underneath Jesse Brown's. Admittedly, I missed the turn at first, so I had to make a loop through an entirely unrelated neighborhood in order to actually find the shop. It’s a smaller shop in size, with a couple of display cases on each side of the cash register, but the cupcakes sure aren’t! Just looking at the display case you can tell that there’s a lot of effort that goes into the cupcakes. The frosting is piled on – three layers up – and some of the cupcakes had additional toppings and decorations as well. How good they tasted, I wasn’t sure, but they looked impressive. I was very tempted to get the Peanut Butter Cup and Salted Chocolate Caramel ...

After the success I had in Cornelius last week , I figured, why not try and make it two for two. When I Googled 'cupcake shops cornelius' a shop called SweetCakes showed up -- just off I-77 at Exit 21. It's located in a shopping center that was surprisingly crowded for my mid-week trip during the middle of the day. After navigating through a bit of congested traffic, I stepped inside the shop. It looks exactly like it does on the website. The cupcakes look the same too. Cookies & Cream It seems like strawberry is one flavor that every cupcake shop has. The other flavor is cookies and cream. This version -- all of the cupcakes at SweetCakes for that matter -- looked different than any other cupcakes I've run across. They have a square, block-ish type of look to the frosting. It's almost like the head of a hammer. I was worried there would be too much frosting, but that wasn't the case at all. It was balanced very nicely. This cookies and...