Paris Cupcake Crawl...Version 1.0

Cupcake Crawl 2010! It happened! With my love of cupcakes rubbing off all over the place, it seemed natural that those closest to me would start to catch on. One of my closest French friends certainly got the fever and joined me on a cupcake crawl of Paris one fine April day. We met at Bon Marché to browse the baking goods and cupcakes in the pastry section. Mildly disgusted by the cakes we saw, we took the Vélib public biking system across the city to the Bastille neighborhood to Cupcake & Co, Paris’ first cupcake boutique.

The vendor seemed a little on guard when she realized I was a cupcake connoisseur (she said my accent gave it away). We chose our cakes and took them to the park across the street. My friend’s pistachio with strawberry interior was pretty good, except that the strawberry fell out.My violet cake tasted like soap. All in all, I am happy that this was the first but certainly not the last cupcake shop in Paris.

Next stop, the Marais! We hopped on the bikes again (to burn off the slowly digesting overload of calories) and we made it to rue du Temple. We skipped gleefully, high on sugar, to Berko, the bakery that operated since 1998 but has only been offering cupcakes at this new storefront on rue Rambuteau since 2008. A box of 6 mini, yet large, cupcakes for under 10 euros was enough to satisfy us. We tried the poppy, cherry, marshmallow, classic vanilla, rose, and Speculoos (think graham crackers) and we had a good time enjoying each flavor. Far from being blown away, we were happy that none tasted too much like soap. Fun and whimsical, we ended the 6 cupcakes with a slice of cheesecake.

Just for good measure.

Laden with butter, cream, and sugar, we grabbed bikes and shot towards Saint Germain, back by the Bon Marché. glish baker who pumps out classy looking cakes with a taste to match. She’s only been open since late 2009, but she’s been baking for ages (she told me). We sat down to our Kusmi tea with a red velvet and a strawberry cupcake. Delight ensued. The cake was moist and delicious and the icings surprising (the strawberry had a meringue icing – so not American). All in all a good way to wrap up the crawl.

Now if only I could find out a way to end this sugar high so I can fall asleep….