Baked and Wired: Cupcakes

Posted by Edmund in Bakeries & Sweets, Featured Articles, Washington, DC | 0 comments

Aug 26, 10

Cuisine: American Baked Goods.
Specialty: Cupcakes.
Location: 1052 Thomas Jefferson St. NW, Washington, DC 20007.
Price: $3.25 or $3.50 for the cupcakes. Most treats are about $1-$3.

As I’ve said before, Washington, DC’s Georgetown area isn’t the hippest, despite the large college community. While it has its fair share of classy restaurants, it always seems a little bit too uptight, with nowhere to go just to relax.

That’s why Baked and Wired stands out as such an oddity. In a neighborhood of suits and formal dining, Baked and Wired decides to serve up simple coffee in a modern, bohemian atmosphere, perfect for the young college crowd. That trendiness is really what keeps me coming back for more. While DC boasts its fair share of cafes and bakeries—many of them with better-quality goods, too—none really compares to Baked and Wired in terms of the intangible “coolness” factor.

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So I decided to return again, this time to try out the cupcakes, the specialty of the house. While the brownies and cookies (which I’ve reviewed previously) are great, people seem to come for the cupcakes more than anything else. Everything I read or hear about Baked and Wired, in fact, seems to focus on these cupcakes: Yelp reviews, recommendations from personal friends, suggestions from the Baked and Wired staff itself, etc. And the fans are passionate about their love of Baked and Wired cupcakes, claiming that they are easily the biggest, most flavorful, and most unique in town.

The cupcakes, though, are also some of the most contested treats I’ve seen. While the large core of fans praise them beyond belief, quite a few detractors attack their overwhelming sweetness and artificial, almost candy-like taste.

That is, unfortunately, the camp into which I too fall. Having tried six different flavors, I can easily say that not only does Baked and Wired produce some of the worst cupcakes in the area, but they are nearly inedible at times.

I do give Baked and Wired points for the always moist and flavorful cake, but the frosting is so horribly sweet that it destroys almost every cupcake. In fact, I have never even managed to finish a single one of their gigantic cupcakes. The surprising part, though, is that the cupcakes don’t actually have all that much frosting, given how huge the cake portion is. The frosting is so strong, though, that regardless of how little you eat, it completely overpowers the taste of the cake.

Nor is the texture of that frosting right. It’s so hardened by all the sugar that it actually feels like a solid lump of sugar, falling like a brick in the stomach. I even tried poking it lightly with a plastic fork, and I couldn’t even pierce a hole in it.

On the more positive side, Baked and Wired does give the most bang for the buck out of all the famous cupcakeries in town. While most cupcakes in DC go for about $3, they’re only about 2 oz. large, i.e. I can finish them in about three bites. Baked and Wired, on the other hand, charges nearly the same price ($3.50 or less), yet gives you nearly a whole meal’s worth of a cupcake—so much so, in fact, that two people can easily share one and be satisfied. Unfortunately, given how sweet the cupcakes are, I don’t think I’d ever want to eat so much.

The cupcakes, then, aren’t very good, but they are cheap, huge, and perfect for people with a monstrously large sweet tooth. I just can’t understand why so many people love them so passionately, though.

What I’ve Tasted

1. Red Velvet Cupcake: This cupcake just barely manages to be enjoyable, but only in the most perverse, overly sweet way. The main problem is the frosting, as with all the cupcakes. I’ve said all the cupcakes suffer from this problem, but here it’s especially marked, because you don’t get any cream cheese taste at all. Instead, it tastes like a simple vanilla frosting, and you lose a lot of the traditional red velvet flavor. Nor does the cake help in that regard. While it has a nice slight cocoa, red velvet touch, I find its flavor very simple, verging on that of a vanilla cake. Still, it is very soft and has a great butteriness to it, without becoming too heavy or oily. That cake largely saves this cupcake. 2.0/5.0
2. Vanilla Latte Cupcake (Vanilla Cake, Espresso and Buttermilk Cream): This I consider a failure of a flavor, as the espresso is almost completely muted. The main problem is that the flavor is relegated solely to the frosting, and that frosting again has that sweet vanilla taste that completely overshadows every other flavor. That’s not to say the espresso isn’t there. For me to taste it, though, I had to eat the frosting alone, and even then it came through very subtly just in the aftertaste. The strongest espresso flavor on the whole cupcake is, unsurprisingly, the one chocolate-covered espresso bean placed on the top. The cake doesn’t help, either. It’s a solid vanilla, with some great butteriness, but it’s very bland. 1.3/5.0. Loses points for not tasting like what it should.

What I’ve Had at Other Times

1. Elvis Cupcake (PB and Bacon): The PB and bacon frosting is just way too much. The cake part isn’t bad in terms of texture, but the cupcake has a bad flavor in general, largely because of the frosting, as the PB taste is again cloying, just like in the PB brownie.
2. Chocolate Doom Cupcake (Chocolate with Chocolate Ganache): Frosting is great, if not too chocolaty, and the cake is right on. It’s a bit cloying and is very rich, but it’s pretty good, especially compared to all the other cupcakes
3. Vanilla on Vanilla Cupcake (Vanilla with Vanilla Frosting): Cake is delicious—light, fluffy, and huge. It tastes just like a nice pound cake. The frosting is just too sweet, though, with that same cloying vanilla taste as that of the other cupcakes.
4. Strawberry cupcake: This is one of the specialties of the house, and it’s actually the best cupcake I’ve had. It again tastes like a good pound cake, as the cake is very moist and nicely flavored. The problem: the frosting. It’s just not balanced, though the flavor, if moderated, would be right on.

Scores

Taste: 1.5/5.0 (For the cupcakes only)
Ambience: 3.8/5.0
Value: 2.5/5.0. While the treats aren’t the best, they really are dense, on top of being huge.
Overall Score, as a cupcakery: 2.0/5.0
Overall Score, as a cupcake café: 2.5/5.0. Good for a hang out spot, but nothing notable about the food.