Halloween Cupcakes from Carlos’s Bakery and Whole Foods
Well, Halloween has passed, and we’re just three weeks from Thanksgiving. I feel like autumn is slipping away. Halloween is one of my favorite times of year, though, so here’s a slightly belated post on my favorite scary cupcakes.
They’re my favorite… and also the only ones I have pictures of. My significant other and I used to have a birthday tradition of cupcakes. We also spent a good part of our adult lives together in Hoboken, where he worked just down the street from Carlos’ Bakery, of Cake Boss fame. I walked by that place for years on my way to the Barnes and Noble (gone), CVS, and the Path train. Of course, I begged a cupcake off him on his way home from work for any special occasion I could justify. His birthday is October 30th, so I would promise him an NYC cupcake in return for a Carlos’ Halloween treat.
That is, until the show Cake Boss came about. These photos are from 2008 because that was the last time we could actually get in to the bakery to buy something without standing in a ridiculously humongous line. Believe me, we tried. I have photos of the line.. but no photos of the cupcakes. It’s a bummer. No more will I stand on the corner of Washington and Newark and smash a cupcake into my face. (Don’t ask.)
Of course, these photos being from 2008 also has another implication. This was just 5 months after I got my SLR camera, and I had no macro lenses. These photos were shot with the kit lens, a really slow 18-55mm, before I knew anything about proper lighting and styling.
Halloween cupcakes
So, in 2008, I traded Lou a Whole Foods spider cupcake for a Carlos’s ghost cupcake. I love this photo because the ghost looks very worried. I think he thinks the spider is going to eat him, despite how positively friendly the spider looks. The spider reminds me of a puppy with his googly eyes.
Ghost cupcake from Carlos's Bakery
It was a red velvet cupcake with a fluffy white icing. I can’t remember how it tasted, but I always liked Carlos’ cupcakes. The cake was moist, the icing was supple. Nothing mindblowing, but solidly good.
A triptych of anxiety. Look, he has a lot on his mind. I mean, he’s dead, and he’s a cupcake.
Spider cupcake
And the spider. Well, he was adorable. Many a time had I admired the Whole Foods cupcakes from their glass case. They’re gorgeous, whether they have seasonal designs or flowers. I’ve had beautiful Whole Foods birthday cakes at work covered with vivid icing blossoms and leaves, and they were tasty, too. However, this cupcake.. well.. I think the Whole Foods icing takes color and shape so well because it is essentially lard. It is pure grease with no flavor at all, like what you find atop those tiny cakes at a Chinese Buffet.
You would suspect that the disk on top of the spider was a cookie of some sort, but no, it was just another lump of icing-lard dusted with cocoa. It was disgusting to bite into it. Truly. What about the cake? Well, it tasted like cornbread. Dry. Corny. This was an absolutely terrible cupcake. I’ve been turned off WF cupcakes for life.
