Friday, April 24, 2009

We heart cupcakes

May is here, which is hard to believe. Time goes fast here at Hela Spa and Ted Gibson. In the last few weeks we have worked our way through a few events, for example Spa-Week. This is a biannual event that we have developed a real love-hate relationship with...

We LOVE seeing all the new clients coming in to try our treatments, and sharing their experiences. We do not love as much the Mt Everest of laundry that Spa-Week creates, and that took us two weeks to get through... Yes, the laundry labor is so intense during and after Spa-Week that it made our massage therapist base a storyline for a modern dance piece on it! (Not kidding. We are creative here at Hela and TG).

What else have we been up to... Oh, we decided to spice up a staff meeting with a cupcake battle! As you all know, the cupcake trend reached DC a few months back and there is quite a few different shops dedicated entirely to cupcakes that each Washingtonian has to choose between when the cupcake tooth sets in.

We decided to let the two most popular vendors in Georgetown battle it out: Georgetown Cupcake and Baked and Wired.

Before the storm: Baked and Wired

Georgetown Cupcake....
Packaging is crucial. Georgetown may win at first glance, but B&W's stickers (which is a little hard to see on this picture) is very cool...

Kelly and Michael fighting over the cherry blossom special edition by Baked & Wired.
So what did we think? Who had the bests cupcakes? It was an quite an even race! Mr Ladner pointed out that he prefers the overall vibe at B&W. However, most of us agreed that B&W's products are sweet. Like, really sweet. To the point where you almost pass out from the sugar rush. (Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Unless you have to go back to work after the munching...)

Georgetown Cupcake on the other hand, had a more nuanced flavor, particularly the frosting. They were smaller though. Which didn't roll with most of us. Cupcakes need to not be cramped into tiny cupcake cups. They need space!

But I guess I do prefer a good tasting cupcake, no matter what size, over a less flavorful, but big, cupcake.

As I'm writing this, Kelly shouts that she thought Baked & Wired was way better. I asked her if she didn't think they were too sweet. She said that she likes sweet things...

As you can tell, it's not that easy to determine a winner. I guess we didn't have one winner. We had two.

To check out neighborhood pastry shops go to georgetowncupcake.com (cool interactive website btw) and bakedandwired.com.
Next time, at the next staff meeting, we are going to try the next big thing... Yes, yogurt ice cream. Hey, Sweet Greens and Ice Berry, better watch out!

2 comments:

  1. Yes - I love this story, Lotta! The B&W, I think are prettier. I have never tasted them, though, so can't really make a judgment there. But, I can say, next time you do a cupcake staff meeting, you might consider including Yellow House cupcakes. They are really wonderful: nuanced, flavorful, moist. The "Pastry Mama" just added cupcakes to the menu, but they are not as good as Yellow House cupcakes.

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  2. Michele!

    So great to hear from you!! We miss you terribly at Hela! I will let Ilana know that you name dropped her company! YellowHouse is amazing, that's for sure.

    Very good to hear about Pastry Mama! Do you have a website? I would love to link to it.

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