Sprinkles

For my birthday my Mom was kind enough to support my cupcake madness with 2 cupcake cookbooks, 150 cupcake wrappers, a decorating kit, sprinkles galore, and 2 boxes of cupcake mix from the semi-famous Sprinkles cupcake shops. They are Red Velvet and Lemon - 2 of my favorites. Here's the container for the Red Velvet. Nice packaging!

The instructions were straightforward, but I thought it was a little weird that it called for vinegar in the mix. Here's the result: Nice red color, decent flavor, much more batter than needed to fill 12 cupcake cups (I filled them to the top and still had batter left over).

I made the recommended cream cheese frosting (delish!) and frosted them.

Here's the setup before I ate the first finished cupcake. The dot is part of the Sprinkles experience (at least that's what the instructions said). They were included with the mix.

Net/net: Well, for something from a cupcakery that has received as much press and accolades as Sprinkles has, they were not awesome. The cake was dry and flavorless. Red Velvet cake should taste chocolate-y, but it really didn't taste like anything at all. The batter said it would make 12 cupcakes, but I filled them to the top and they overflowed, creating a big overhang that wanted to tip the whole cupcake. The frosting was incredible, but wasn't enough to salvage the cupcake itself. And the dot? Rock hard, shattered when I bit into it, and made me afraid a tiny candy shard was going to embed itself into the roof of my mouth. Total Bummer. I hope the Lemon is better.