Recent mention at the Premier Cupcake Blog - Cupcakes Take The Cake

Houston Press is hosting a Cupcake Smackdown on January 24th and is looking for judges!

Cupcakes from a dozen restaurants and bakeries around Houston will be pitted against each other in an epic gladiatorial event that's too big for our weekly Food Fight. To keep things interesting, we'll also have a batch of homemade cupcakes thrown in to the mix to see if our judges can tell the difference. Cupcakes will be blind taste-tested by a panel of four judges on cake taste, frosting taste, cake texture, frosting texture and cake-to-frosting ratio. Finally, the cupcakes we've kept in reserve will be revealed and the judges' blindfolds removed so they can judge the overall appearance of each cupcake. The winner will be crowned the Eating Our Words Cupcake King.

And the winners are

In the end, though, there could be only one winner. In the vanilla with chocolate category, the overall winner was Ooh La La with 117 total points out of a possible 150 (each metric was worth 25 points). Second place went to CRAVE Cupcakes with 94 points and Sugarbaby's came in a strong third with 93. In the red velvet category, the overall winner was once again Ooh La La with 121 points out of 150. CRAVE also took second place again with 100 points, followed very closely by Bella Cibo with 99. Interestingly, the scores across the board were much higher in the red velvet round, confirming our suspicion that everyone loves red velvet cake.

Other interesting statistics that jumped out at us as we were scoring the ballots:
• Best cake texture and taste went to Ooh La La, with Cupcake Cafe coming up second in both the red velvet and vanilla with chocolate categories.
• Best frosting texture and taste went to Sugarbaby's, with Ooh La La second in the vanilla with chocolate frosting round.
• Best frosting texture and taste went to Ooh La La, with Frosted Betty coming in second in the red velvet with cream cheese frosting round.
• Best overall appearance was a tie between Celebrity Cupcakes and Ooh La La in the vanilla round.
• Best overall appearance went to Ooh La La, with the Sweet Spot coming in second in the red velvet round.

See their cupcake slideshow and Houston Press for photos, cupcake bakery addresses and more information.