Cupcake Tour of DC

When you’re a foodie, the best part of visiting a new city isn’t the historical monuments or the shopping centers. It’s the food—more specifically, the cupcakes.

My partners in crime, Holly and Madeline share this same sentiment. After over a year of stalking reading there blogs I was ecstatic to finally meet both of them. On Friday after finding each other at the race expo we down to Georgetown to Georgetown Cupcakes.

If you aren’t aware of the gem of a reality show that is DC Cupcakes you really should be. The TLC show focuses on two sisters who opened up a cupcake bakery and… well, that’s the entire premise. But I promise it’s funny. The storefront offered some amazing sounding flavors. I was most surprised when I saw they had a gluten-free lava fudge cupcake for me!

This might have been the best cupcake I have ever eaten: a chocolate cupcake with a vanilla cream cheese frosting and a fudge sauce filling. The filling was delicious and entirely unexpected. And the cupcake part didn’t taste starchy at all which can be a problem with gluten-free baked goods. But the best part was the frosting; Madeline and I both agreed that we would have bought a tub of the frosting if they sold that.

On Sunday the three of us headed to Sticky Fingers Bakery for breakfast. The owner of the bakery won season 1 of Cupcake Wars on Food Network(another show that I admit is awful and yet 100% addicting). Sticky Fingers is an all vegan café with plenty of gluten-free options, too.

I ordered the gluten-free pancake plate which came with maple syrup, tofu scramble, and vegan grits.

Simply put, the pancakes were amazing. They were thin but the taste and texture were dead on. They even soaked up the maple syrup perfectly. I have no idea how they made these without eggs or gluten but I want the recipe.

The vegan grits came with Daiya cheese. I’m still not even sure what grits are or how these were made. They were filling and tasted OK but could have used a pinch more of salt.

Sticky Fingers was definitely a winner in my book.

On the way out we all grabbed some cupcakes. I meant to save it for the bus ride to the airport but ended up eating it at 11am. Hey, I did run a marathon the day before.

I got the gluten-free chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting. The cupcake itself was excellent and reminded me a lot of Georgetown Cupcake’s gluten-free cupcake. The frosting, however, was a little boring and just tasted generically sweet. I enjoyed Georgetown Cupcake’s cupcake more but if I were vegan I would not at all mind settling for Sticky Fingers. My only wish would be that cupcake stores make more interesting gluten-free flavors than chocolate(I swear I ordered it both times not because I’m a chocoholic but because that’s all there was).

I have to say thanks to my hungry companions, Holly and Madeline, for the awesome time! The only question left is what city should we hit up next?