Batson's Blog

Happy National Cupcake Day! If you haven’t celebrated it accordingly yet, then you have another opportunity to do so this Saturday in Lincolnton, North Carolina. There’s a fundraising event called “Cruisin’ for a Cause.” Profits go to four different agencies: Relay for Life , Hesed House of Hope , Amy’s House , and the Lincoln County Coalition Against Child Abuse and Child Advocacy Center . From 5 pm until 10 pm, you can cruise around the court house in Lincolnton . One of the fundraising activities they will feature at the event is a local version of cupcake wars. Participants will be judged on three different categories: best tasting, best looking and best “cruisin” theme. For example, you may see a cupcake with a theme from the 1950’s, when teenagers would cruise the loop. A prize will be given in each category. Anyone who doesn’t have a cupcake entered into one of the categories can vote and choose the winner. Each cupcake will be sold for $2 or you can get three c...

After a break from the sweetness last week, I'm back, sampling a few more of Charlotte's cupcakes. I went to Pineville and on the way back, driving North on Park Road, so I stopped in at Suarez Bakery . It's located in a strip mall at the Park Road Shopping Center. It's actually kind of hard to find because it blends in. I parked right in front of it, but had to look around for a while to find it. The name on the sign is a little bit faded, which doesn't help. The location is easy enough to get too, but from my experiences with the Park Road Shopping Center, it can be pretty crowded at times, so you may have to park and then walk a little to get to the shop. Suarez shares the shop with Tizzerts (can you guess which cupcake shop I'm going to try next week?). The Tizzert cupcakes do have a more artistic look than the Suarez cupcakes, but in case you can't tell which is which, they have signs in the display cases, indicating which bakery made the ...

After trying store-bought cupcakes from Target and Wal-Mart last week, I went the opposite direction this week – literally and figuratively. I made a stop at Sunflour Bakery , off The Plaza. It’s a bakery that is dedicated “to creating fresh baked goods every day from scratch with ingredients that are organic and local whenever possible.” “At Sunflour, our products are real food made without artificial ingredients, hydrogenated oils, preservatives, or dough conditioners so that you can trace the food back to its basic ingredients and origins.” - sunflourbakingcompany.com I stopped Saturday afternoon – less than 10 minutes before closing time. They have new winter hours. Despite me stopping in at a point when they were probably cleaning up, the staff gave me a friendly greeting. I didn’t have a lot of time to look around, but thankfully I took a look at their Facebook page ahead of time. I knew they had a Rolo cupcake – a dark chocolate cake filled with house made caramel...

Though they aren’t native to Charlotte, Wal-Mart and Target both carry Kimberley’s Bakeshoppe Gourmet Cupcakes. They look like something you’d find in the display case of a bakery, rather than in a four-pack on a shelf at a big box store. Therefore, it qualifies as a candidate on my quest for Charlotte’s best-tasting cupcake. Plus, it’s an excuse to have something sweet. Other than their holiday specials, Kimberley’s has four different flavors to choose from: -Triple chocolate, filled with rich chocolate fudge -Vanilla bean, filled with sweet vanilla cream -Lemon Ice, filled with tangy lemon curd -Red Velvet, filled with real cream cheese As a faithful fan of anything red velvet, I went with that option. It was a tasty treat, but there were a couple of downfalls with this cupcake. First, it was tough to get it out of the plastic case and wrapper without becoming a frosting-fingered mess. There was just too much frosting on the top. Come to think of it, that was th...

The search for Charlotte's best cupcake is on! I was doing some Googling the other day, looking for someplace to get a cupcake, and realized just how many cupcake shops there are in Charlotte. There's quite a selection to choose from. Where to go? Which one is the best? Those are the questions I intend to answer. Each week I'll go to a new bakery and test out a new cupcake (it's a rough job indeed). So, without further ado, let’s get to the cupcakes! First up: Nona’s Sweets Bakery and Cafe I’ve driven by Nona’s, located in the University area, several times. I’d never stopped before though. From the outside it looks like Nona's has a decent amount of store space, but I wasn’t expecting such a large selection of sweets when I walked in. They’ve got cupcakes, cookies, whoopee pies, chocolates, fudge, caramels, cake and mini-cheesecakes, among other delicious looking treats. I was literally like a kid in a candy shop – or in this case an adult in...