Pumpkin Passion

Name: Pumpkin Cupcake
Purchased At: Sprinkles Cupcakes
Price: approx $3.25
Availability: Year Round

I had NO idea! Absolutely NO idea!!! Did you know that some people will stand in line for over 40 minutes to get themselves a CUPCAKE? Yeah, I said cupcake!

It all started on a Southwest flight from LAX to Nashville. For some strange reason . . . . . actually it’s probably out of boredom . . . . . I enjoy reading their in-flight magazine “Spirit.” During this particular trip, I think it was sometime in either February or March of last year, they did an article on cupcake bakeries. It all just seemed so cute, fluffy little pieces of cake in paper wrappers can’t help but remind me of childhood birthday parties at school. I noticed that one of them was in Los Angeles, so I tore the article out (it’s okay to do that right?) and saved it.

On a particularly BORING day I looked up the website, which is super cute, and saw that they have pumpkin cupcakes on Wednesdays and Fridays all year round! During lunch on a quiet Friday, I headed over to Sprinkles Cupcakes, located at 9635 Little Santa Monica Blvd, in Beverly Hills.

While I knew that I might be a few minutes late getting back to work, I was not at all prepared to take a 2 hour lunch break. The line to get purchase a cupcake spilled out the door and down the street. I felt foolish and embarrassed to be standing in line for a cupcake. People stared and then they realized what we were in line for and they cracked jokes and laughed! In an effort to bring you the most up-to-date information on pumpkin products I continued to wait over a half an hour until it was my turn. However, my resentment turned into heightened expectations. These had better be some DAMN good cupcakes.

I even waited until I was home to eat them so that I could take pictures of these cutie patootie cupcakes. FINNALY it was time to taste them! I took a bite and slowly words start coming to mind: pumpkinlicious, tasty, moist, good . . . . . and familiar. Somehow they tasted familiar. I asked my friends to taste the pumpkin cupcake. They agreed that the frosting was great (it’s not pumpkin flavored frosting—more of a vanilla) and the cake was good. I took another bite and then it struck me. It tastes exactly like your everyday pumpkin muffin, just with more frosting! It had some good pumpkin and pumpkin spice flavoring but it wasn’t particularly impressive. It certainly didn’t stand out.

After all that, I wouldn’t go back for them again—even if there was no line and even if it didn’t cost $3.25 each. It just wasn’t anything to write home about; jeez, it’s barely something to blog about!

Word of Warning!!! Those cute colorful dots on top of the cupcake should be taken off and thrown in the trash! I’m not entirely sure if they were supposed to be eaten but I ate them anyway. They have the consistency and taste of a thin piece of plastic. I thought they would taste like Necco Wafers but NOPE.

I also purchased a red velvet and chai latte cupcake. The red velvet was almost worth the wait!

Rating: 7 out of 10

Yes, this has become know as the “orphan blog” but I’m back and am looking to reclaim my little round orange baby, aka “Pumpkin Passion.”

While my blogging on pumpkins may have taken a hiatus, my passion for pumpkins did not. In fact, even my very first vacation requiring a passport involved my love for pumpkins.

Back in late October, I took a trip to London, England. Yeah! Much fun was had by me and my friends. The trip involved my loves for Harry Potter (we saw platform 9 3/4), Jane Austen (we visited the The Jane Austen Centre in the city of Bath) and Pumpkins.

At Kew Gardens they had an Autumn Harvest Festival complete with 5.3 million cranberries, 200 varieties of Apple, and 30 tonnes of pumpkin. While I’m not sure if they REALLY counted all those cranberries and I had to google “tonnes” to learn that it’s a measurement of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms, I do know that the gardens were absolutely beautiful and it was such an enormous pleasure to be there during the fall season.

The pumpkin display was the best I have ever seen. Just look at some of these pictures:

The highlight was the 6 metre figure of a running man constructed from pumpkins!!! How freaking awesome is that?!?! It’s not something you see in the States because we look at pumpkins and see jack o’ laterns and pies but they see art.

Even though we were there the week before Halloween, this was really the only time we ever saw pumpkins. There was absolutely no pumpkin food-not even a pumpkin spice latte could be found at the London Starbucks. We did, however, manage to have a great time.

Rating: 10 out of 10